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50db2ba
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The Clock on the Morning Lenape Building Must Clocks be circles? Time is not a circle. Suppose the Mother of All Minutes started right here, on the sidewalk in front of the Morning Lenape Building, and the parade of minutes that followed--each of them, say, one inch long-- headed out that way, down Bridge Street. Where would Now be? This minute? Out past the moon? Jupiter? The nearest star? Who came up with minutes, anyway? Who needs them? ..
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time
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Jerry Spinelli |
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5500574
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Best friends are always together, always whispering and laughing and running, always at each other's house, having dinner, sleeping over. They are practically adopted by each other's parents. You can't pry them apart.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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8da873f
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She dreams a lot. She dreams of Ondines and falling maidens and houses burning in the night. But search her dreams all you like and you'll never find Prince Charming. No knight on a white horse gallops into her dreams to carry her away. When she dreams of love, she dreams of smashed potatoes.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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6ade11d
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I grabbed her, right there outside the lunch room in the swarming mob. I didn't care if others were watching. In fact, i hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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8aff52d
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Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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ecb6bb3
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I felt alone on the planet, drifting through the cosmos. With both hands I reached out to the night. There was no answer. Or maybe I just couldn't hear it.
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life
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Jerry Spinelli |
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31325d9
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I faced the gaudy sunflower on her canvas bag -- it looked hand-painted and at last my eyes fell into hers. I said, 'Thanks for the card.' Her smile put the sunflower to shame. She walked off.
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love
stargirl
spinelli
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Jerry Spinelli |
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7b6946b
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In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew
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stargirl
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Jerry Spinelli |
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4c2a2e1
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I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'l still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be - Okay, I'll say it again - loving you, but I won't abandon myseld for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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d08d1bc
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She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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3ee54d8
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of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did. But bad things falling on her -- unkind words, nasty stares, foot blisters -- she seemed unaware of. I never saw her look in a mirror, never heard her c..
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Jerry Spinelli |
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4452519
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You're cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone forever. It's now yesterday. Some of those moments may have had wonderful things in store for you , but now you'll never know.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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ab4662d
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Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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cc8b941
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When does the enchantment start? We were sitting side by side, facing the mountains. "It started when the earth was born." Her eyes was closed. Her face was golden in the setting sun. "It never stops. It is, always. It's just here." So what do we do?" She smiled. "That's the secret." Her cupped hands rested in her lap. "We do nothing. Or as close to nothing as we can." Her face turned slowly to me, though her eyes remained closed. "Have you..
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Jerry Spinelli |
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ceb6e47
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Throughout the day, Stargirl had been dropping money. She was the Johnny Appleseed of loose change: a penny here, a nickel there. Tossed to the sidewalk, laid on a shelf or bench. Even quarters. "I hate change," she said. "It's so . . . jangly." "Do you realize how much you must throw away in a year?" I said. "Did you ever see a little kid's face when he spots a penny on a sidewalk?"
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Jerry Spinelli |
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914ace4
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Did I ever tell you my pet peeve?' No,' I said. People who dress up their pets to look like Little Lord Fauntleroys or cowboys, clowns, ballerinas. As if it's not enough just to be a dog or cat or turtle.
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pets
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Jerry Spinelli |
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91dd130
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To have a girl two thousand miles away going to pieces over you, weeping at the mere memory of you, losing her appetite, losing herself and her self respect - well, that's a trophy enough for a guy's ego, huh?
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Jerry Spinelli |
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3f35511
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A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if ..
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Jerry Spinelli |
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efb1071
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She's alone, they kept telling themselves, and surely she danced in no one's arms, yet somehow that seemed to matter less and less. As the night went on, and clarinet and coyote call mingled beyond the lantern light, the magic of their own powder-blue jackets and orchids seemed to fade, and it came to them in small sensations that they were more alone than she was.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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c19ad57
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She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else's; but timid introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life
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Jerry Spinelli |
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e3b66de
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Disagreement is not necessarily a reason to head for Splitsville. In fact, a relationship without disagreement is probably too brittle to last. Some of the best human bonds are forged in the fire of disagreement.
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relationships
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Jerry Spinelli |
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1b1caaa
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Many girls have been romanced under the moon, and I don't mean to say moonlight is overrated, but few I think have known the magic of a sunrise kiss.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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a597fcf
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If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you'll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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1aed6dd
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You know, there's a place we all inhabit, but we don't much think about it, we're scarcely conscious of it, and it lasts for less than a minute a day. It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and somethin..
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Jerry Spinelli |
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eca70be
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Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow. Do you know what you're doing when you spend a moment wondering how things are going to turn out? You're cheating yourself out of today. Today is calling to you, trying to get your attention, but you're stuck on tomorrow, and today trickles away like water down a drain. You wake up the next morning and that today you wasted is gone fo..
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Jerry Spinelli |
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b91e863
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Who are you?' I didn't understand the question. I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?' I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.
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labels
milkweed
self
name
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Jerry Spinelli |
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2b95743
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Today the mockingbird does not sound very happy. It sounds if it is coming apart. As of the very heart of itself-its song-is breaking into pieces and flying off in a hundred directions.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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e326ab8
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Nobody knows who said it first, but somebody must have: 'Kid's gotta be a maniac.
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pg-28
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Jerry Spinelli |
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a24664a
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I am a mess. Like that MargieMocha, I am spilled across a floor, but there's nobody to mop me up. I have only one thing to show for the day: Perry Delloplane. The sound of a name. It is a grape in my mouth. I roll it over and over on my tongue--perrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplaneperrydelloplane--but when I try to crush it with my teeth, it slips away.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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695da97
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I feel like I'm playing chess underwater. The pieces keep floating away. I don't know where things are. I can't figure out tomorrow.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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e272f68
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Events become feelings, feelings become events
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Jerry Spinelli |
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69b9310
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He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.' I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?' 'Inside.' It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.
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happy
milkweed
warsaw
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Jerry Spinelli |
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f692609
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What she saw, she felt. Her eyes went straight to her heart.
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sympathy
feelings
emotion
feel
sense
perception
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Jerry Spinelli |
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90ee553
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Live today. Not yesterday. Not tomorrow. Just today. Inhabit your moments. Don't rent them out to tomorrow.
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today
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Jerry Spinelli |
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0aff01e
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Let's just be fabulously where we are and who we are. You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!
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reunion
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Jerry Spinelli |
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1511d48
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And smiles to go before I weep, And Smiles to go before I weep.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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0bdd6ec
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dygr mydy bh pyd shdn nyst.dnbl mn nkhrd! bgdhr fqT fsnhwr hmnj khh hstym w hr khh hstym bmnym. tw khwdt bsh w mn hm khwdm.mrwz w mrwz w mrwz. w bgdhr ayndh bh frd `tmd khnd. bgdhr strhh mrqb m bshnd. bgdhr dr mdrhy khwdmn Hrkht khnym, w mTmy'n bshym khh rwzy dr ayndh bh hm brmykhwrnd. bgdhr tjdyd dydrmn nh ykh yftn w pyd shdn, khh tSdf shyryn srnwshtmn bshd! bz hm dwstt drm w dwstt drm w dwstt drm!
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Jerry Spinelli |
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ba95a3b
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Where were we?" she said. "Getting credit," I said. "What about it?" "Well, it's nice to get credit." The spokes of her rear wheel spun behind the curtain of her long skirt. She looked like a photograph from a hundred years ago. She turned her wide eyes on me. "Is it?" she said."
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Jerry Spinelli |
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d40ef1c
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Vowels were something else. He didn't like them and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. Why, you could go through twenty words without bumping into some of the shyer consonants, but it seemed as if you couldn't tiptoe past a syllable without waking up a vowel. Consonants, you know pretty much where you stood, but you could never trust a vowel.
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syllable
vowels
maniac
grammar
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Jerry Spinelli |
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1098141
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As we meandered, she said my name three times: "Stargirl?" "Yes?" "That was better than TV." "It was." "Stargirl?" "Yes?" "Does the sun do that everyday?" "Yes." "Stargirl?" "Yes?" "Everyday is sun day."
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Jerry Spinelli |
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3a43947
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The echo of her laughter is the second sunrise I awaken to each day, and at night I feel it is more than the stars looking down on me.
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Jerry Spinelli |
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b50548c
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You be you and I'll be me, today and today and today, and let's trust the future to tomorrow. Let the stars keep track of us. Let us ride our own orbits and trust that they will meet. May our reunion be not a finding but a sweet collision of destinies!
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fate
love
stargirl
serendipity
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Jerry Spinelli |
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7557bfd
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His smile was so wide he'd have had to break it into sections to fit it through a doorway
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metaphor
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Jerry Spinelli |
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00a55c4
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And the trouble with bad times is, you can't sleep through them.
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trouble
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Jerry Spinelli |