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f5bc7f3
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Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of assembly line.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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09d7736
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free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e61e17b
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But most often she watched the candles as if their outcome held her own, the flames almost extinguishing themselves, but, by some greed of oxygen, persisting.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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7f296ac
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What was interesting about being the needy one was how much in love you felt. It was almost worth it. This dependency was what Leonard had guarded himself against feeling all his life, but he couldn't do it anymore. He'd lost the ability to be an asshole. Now he was smitten, and it felt both tremendous and scary.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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157648c
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within the frosted bushes. It was only in
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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deda721
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El doctor Armonson le cosio los cortes de las munecas y a los cinco minutos de la transfusion la declaro fuera de peligro. Tras acariciarle la barbilla, le dijo: -?Que haces aqui, guapa? Si todavia no tienes edad para saber lo mala que es la vida...
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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801f8dc
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After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco . . .
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united-states-navy
san-francisco
world-war-ii
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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f0eb200
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The thing was, Mitchell now knew what Merton meant, or thought he did. As he took in the marvelous sights, the dusty Polo grounds, the holy cows with their painted horns, he got into the habit of walking around Calcutta in the presence of God. Furthermore, it seemed to Mitchell that this didn't have to be a difficult thing. It was something every child knew how to do, maintain a direct and full conversation with the world. Somehow you forgo..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e6e0437
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Speramus meliora; resurgret cineribus. "We hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes,"
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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a898a79
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tama kaikki on tuuleen huutamista. Itsemurhien ytimessa ei ollut suru eika salaperaisyys, vaan silkka itsekkyys. Tytot riistivat itselleen ratkaisut, jotka on viisainta jattaa Jumalalle. Heista tuli liian voimallisia elamaan meidan keskuudessamme, liian itsekeskeisia, liian nakemyksellisia, liian sokeita. He eivat jattaneet jalkeensa elamaa, joka aina siloittaa luonnollisen kuoleman jaljet, vaan mita arkipaivaisimman luettelon maallisia sei..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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fbaa0e2
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He was like a statue being chiseled away from the inside, hollowed out. As more and more of his thoughts gave him pain, Milton had increasingly avoided them. Instead he concentrated on the few that made him feel better, the bromides about everything working out. Milton, quite simply, had ceased to think things through.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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2f06f61
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When you travel like I did, vague about destination and with an open-ended itinerary, a holy-seeming openness takes over your character. It's the reason the first philosophers were peripatetic.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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ea7dcf5
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And for a time the tree stood blighted, trying to raise its stumted arms, a creature clubbed mute, only its sudden voicelessness making us realize it had been speaking all along.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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3204563
|
Her father was about to have a heart attack, and my memories of her are now tinged with a blue wash of misfortune that hadn't quite befallen her at the time. She was standing bare-legged in the jungly weeds that grew up between our houses. Her skin was already beginning to react to the grass cuttings stuck to the ball, whose sogginess was suddenly explained by the overweight Labrador who now limped into view.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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4053a26
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and the magisterial presence of all those words stopped her in her tracks.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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ae5fe65
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A sniper is cowardly, sneaky; he kills from a distance, unseen.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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1de5443
|
I'd never been this close to the Obscure Object before. It was hard on my organism. My nervous system launched into "Flight of the Bumblebee." The violins were sawing away in my spine. The timpani were banging in my chest. At the same time, trying to conceal all of this, I didn't move a muscle. I heardly breathed. That was the deal basically: catatonia without; frenzy within."
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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aa538ef
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And he rose, brontosaurus-like, to his place among the treetops.
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madeleine-hanna
marriage-plot
jeffrey-eugenides
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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9a561fc
|
As one does the return of sun after winter, I stood still and accepted the warm glow of possibility, of feeling right in the company of this small, oddly fierce person, with the inky hair and the lovely, unemphasized body.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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378c933
|
At one point, a girl who looked to be in her early twenties, with a Joan of Arc haircut, passed right in front of the glass. When Mitchell looked at her, the girl did an amazing thing: she looked back. She met his gaze with frank sexual meaning. Not that she "wanted" to have sex with him, necessarily. Only that she was happy to acknowledge, on this late-summer evening, that he was a man and she a woman, and if he found her attractive, that ..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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2981b38
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itse tila, jota sana kuvaa, on erittain hyvin tunnettu. Silla nimittain tarkoitetaan ihmissuhteen syntymisen ensimmaista huumausta. Se aiheuttaa huimausta, hilpeytta ja rintalastan kutinaa. Perifesenssi on rakastumisen hullu, romanttinen puoli.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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a315a81
|
I never know what I feel until it's too late.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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8a6041a
|
I don't approve of women driving, mind you. And now they get to vote!" He grumbled to himself. "Remember that play we saw ("The Minotaur")? All women are like that. Given a chance, they'd all fornicate with a bull."
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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afb1618
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Tessie and I lay in our chairs, listening to wax being violently removed. 'Oh my!' cried the large lady. 'Is nothing,' belittled Helga. 'I do it perfect.' 'Oweee!' yelped a bikini-liner. And Helga, taking an oddly femenist stance: 'See what you do for the mens? You suffer. Is not worth it.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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45e39ae
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And all goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, / and to die is different from that anyone supposed, and luckier.
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virgin-suicides
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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4953145
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If this story is written only for myself, then so be it. But it doesn't feel that way. I feel you out there, reader. This is the only kind of intimacy I'm comfortable with. Just the two of us, here in the dark.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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233bee9
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Every morning a great wall of fog descends upon the city of San Francisco. It begins far out at sea. It forms over the Farallons, covering the sea lions on their rocks, and then it sweeps onto Ocean Beach, filling the long green bowl of Golden Gate Park. The fog obscures the early morning joggers and the lone practitioners of tai chi. It mists up the windows of the Glass Pavilion. It creeps over the entire city, over the monuments and movie..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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0de9b1a
|
I climbed the stairs and got back into bed, pulling a pillow over my face to block out the summer light. But there was no hiding from reality that morning.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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95750ed
|
Father Mike was popular with the church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike's perfect contentment at being five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height.
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short
widows
size
popularity
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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c0f4beb
|
Nous savions que les filles etaient nos jumelles, que nous existions tous dans l'espace comme des animaux qui avaient la meme peau, et qu'elles savaient tout de nous alors que nous etions incapables de percer leur mystere. Nous savions, enfin, que les filles etaient en realite des femmes deguisees, qu'elles comprenaient l'amour et meme la mort, et que notre boulot se bornait a creer le bruit qui semblait tant les fasciner.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e92cc32
|
Semiotic was the form Zipperstein`s midlife crisis had taken... Instead of buying sports car, he'd bought deconstrution.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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6d004f0
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that manic depression, far from being a liability was an advantage. It was a selected trait. If it wasn't selected for, then the "disorder" would have disappeared long ago, bred out of the population like anything else that didn't increase the odds of survival. The advantage was obvious. The advantage was the energy, the creativity, the feeling of genius, almost, that Leonard felt right now. There was no telling how many great historical fi..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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2d4f010
|
I'm not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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4105e59
|
It was convenient to call them snipers, because if they weren't snipers, then what were they? The governor didn't say it; the newspapers didn't say it; the history books still do not say it, but I, who watched the entire thing on my bike, saw it clearly: in Detroit, in July of 1967, what happened was nothing less than a guerrilla uprising. The Second American Revolution.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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55954a2
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Figures. They let you in for free. Then you gotta pay for the rest of your life.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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e910755
|
There were pencil scrawls and ink stains, dried blood, snack crumbs; and the leather binding itself was secured to the lectern by a chain. Here was a book that contained the collected knowledge of the past while giving evidence of present social conditions...The dictionary contained every word in the English language but the chain knew only a few. It knew thief and steal and, maybe, purloined. The chain spoke of poverty and mistrust and ine..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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f28ce98
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I'd never seen a creature with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, originating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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ad48e7e
|
What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death.
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life
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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4ddd760
|
On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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12827ec
|
Within the substandard construction of the Charlevoix church, literally upon a shaky foundation, I was baptized into the Orthodox faith; a faith that had existed long before Protestantism had anything to protest and before Catholicism called itself catholic; a faith that stretched back to the beginnings of Christianity, when it was Greek and not Latin, and which, without an Aquinas to reify it, had remained shrouded in the smoke of traditio..
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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6b9a951
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But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant ...) Spring
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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a8b83da
|
I don't want to ruin your life," Leonard said in a gentler tone. "You're not ruining it." "The drugs just slow the process down. But the end's inevitable. The question is, how to turn this thing off?" He jabbed at his head with his index finger. "It's cutting me up, and I can't turn it off. Madeleine, listen to me. Listen. I'm not going to get better."
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love
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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34a6bec
|
Hogy az emberek miert pont ahhoz kotik az eletuket, akikhez aztan kotik, azt tobbnyire epp az erintettek ertik a legkevesbe.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |
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cac061a
|
And so a strange new possibility is arising. Compromised, indefinite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated: free will is making a comeback. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
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Jeffrey Eugenides |