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life was a glorious catastrophe.
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Jess Walter |
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89aff62
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A writer needs four things to achieve greatness, Pasquale: desire, disappointment, and the sea.
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Jess Walter |
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75bc597
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Sometimes," she said, "what we want to do and what we must do are not the same." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Pasqo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be."
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Jess Walter |
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0086a7a
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Os hospitais tentam vender centros de parto, os infantarios vendem amor, as escolas vendem sucesso... os vendedores de carros promovem o luxo, os conselheiros a autoestima, as massagistas oferecem finais felizes, os cemiterios anunciam o repouso eterno... E interminavel, esta febre de vender, promover, exaltar - constante, esgotante, e implacavel como a morte.
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Jess Walter |
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205ed8b
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you broke up two marriages, and faked a young woman's illness, and bribed her to get an abortion--all in the first chapter--
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Jess Walter |
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b085537
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Words and emotions are simple currencies. If we inflate them, they lose their value,
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Jess Walter |
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fbd9899
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and now there are two distinct phases to sex with Daryl: the first two minutes like an exam from an autistic gynecologist, the next ten a visit from the Roto-Rooter man.
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Jess Walter |
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d3cf0ba
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Io ti maledico a morire lentamente, tormentato dalla tua anima miserabile!" I curse you to a"
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Jess Walter |
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6ef1b24
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Sometimes, now, when she sees how content Pat and Lydia are, she feels like a spent salmon: her work here is done. But other times, honestly, the whole idea of being at peace just pisses her off. At peace? Who but the insane would ever be at peace? What person who has enjoyed life could possibly think one is enough? Who could live even a day and not feel the sweet ache of regret?
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Jess Walter |
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091b109
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Great fiction tells unknown truths.
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Jess Walter |
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6278c9f
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What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he is dead?
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Jess Walter |
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724c3c7
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All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character - what we believe - none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But there's the thing: it's our goddamned story!
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Jess Walter |
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984a699
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But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start. Do
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Jess Walter |
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2009f33
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True sacrifice is painless.
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Jess Walter |
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94bae64
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Always speak first to the toughest person in the room.
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Jess Walter |
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bce588f
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Maybe all love is hopeless.
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Jess Walter |
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381f44b
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Couldn't you outgrow the little-girl fantasy? Couldn't love be gentler, smaller, quiter, not quite all-consuming?
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Jess Walter |
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bb58bef
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the water. The feral cats scattered before her.
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Jess Walter |
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1b14781
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Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality--that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries--America with its expansive youth, building all those..
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Jess Walter |
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b48ffe8
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Agent: This book doesn't work. Shane: You mean, in your opinion. Agent: I mean in English).
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Jess Walter |
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0942981
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We live in a world of banal miracles.
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Jess Walter |
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And on and on it goes, in a thousand directions, everything occurring at once, in a great storm of the present, of now - all those lovely wrecked lives.
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Jess Walter |
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e55f18c
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Weren't movies his generation's faith anyway--its true religion? Wasn't the theater our temple, the one place we enter separately but emerge from two hours later together, with the same experience, same guided emotions, same moral? A million schools taught ten million curricula, a million churches featured ten thousand sects with a billion sermons--but the same movie showed in every mall in the country. And we all saw it!
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Jess Walter |
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cf8188e
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and he urges the old man to remember the last moment he felt his being without its relation to beloved Amedea, his last moment of individual happiness or longing--
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Jess Walter |
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ffecad6
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That summer, the one you'll never forget, every movie house beamed the same set of thematic and narrative images--the same Avatar, same Harry Potter, same Fast and the Furious, flickering pictures stitched in our minds that replaced our own memories, archetypal stories that became our shared history, that taught us what to expect from life, that defined our values. What was that but a religion? Also,
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Jess Walter |
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b8d0ec8
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His life was two lives now: the life he would have and the life he would forever wonder about. "Please," Pasquale rasped to Tommaso. "Go." The" --
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Jess Walter |
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229c697
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There was nothing explicit between them, nothing more than that slightly open door. And yet . . . what could be more alluring? In
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Jess Walter |
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the scramble to get higher, to be seen, the cycle of creation and rebellion, everyone assuming they were saying something new or doing something new, something profound--when the truth was tat it had all been done a million billion times.
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Jess Walter |
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f5aee5c
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If you want to make art, go get a job at the Loov-rah.
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filmmaking
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Jess Walter |
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f362d5a
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IN THE NINE YEARS since the standoff at Ruby Ridge and in the six years since this book first appeared, much has happened. Yet little has changed. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent on hearings and investigations that failed to resolve the most basic questions about the standoff. Almost $3.5 million was paid out in settlements that settled nothing. Nine years later, the courts are still flip-flopping over whether a federal agent sh..
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Jess Walter |
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89add5a
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YOU CAN SEE FOR MILES in both directions from the point on Ruby Ridge. From here, the paths of the Weaver family and the federal government seem inevitable, trucks barreling toward each another on a one-lane road. The government's route to Ruby Ridge was a twenty-year drift toward militaristic law enforcement, in which quiet agents in suits gave way to federal SWAT teams competing for funding, in which unchecked arrogance and zeal allowed f..
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Jess Walter |
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25f1ccf
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all we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character--what we believe--none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!
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story
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Jess Walter |
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5ed54cd
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Every Sunday, the Weavers drove their Oldsmobile east toward Waterloo and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Cedarloo Baptist Church, on a hill between Waterloo and Cedar Falls, took their place in the pews, and listened to the minister. But there seemed to be no fire or passion, no sense of what was really happening in the world. They'd tried other churches and found congregations interested in what God had done 2,000 years ago, but..
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Jess Walter |
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39e0fcd
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To the Cedar Falls legalists, if God's word could come that way 10,000 years ago, there was no reason to believe it couldn't come that way now. So when Vicki decided her family would follow Old Testament law and stop eating unclean meat like pork and oysters ("The Lord says, 'Don't eat it'--He knows it's got trichonomas and isn't good for your body," Vicki wrote to a friend), no one in the group thought she'd come about the decision from an..
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Jess Walter |
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f8cbed8
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Each gray hair still seemed like a weevil in a flower bed.
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Jess Walter |
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81195d2
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It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.
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Jess Walter |
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c6546f2
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imagine never leaving North Idaho again. He's got his coffee and he's got his ritual, his work around the cabin, and with the new satellite dish Lydia buys him for his birthday, he's got nine hundred channels and he's got Netflix,
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Jess Walter |
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1c18ae7
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And what she loved about Lydia's play: that it gets at this idea that true sacrifice is painless.
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Jess Walter |
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989955f
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All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character--what we believe--none of it is real; it's all part of the story we tell. But here's the thing: it's our goddamned story!" Debra"
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Jess Walter |
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2044079
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That's why people write books and stories, no doubt, to leave some impression behind, to share a sense of the beauty and pain. This
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Jess Walter |
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44ec20d
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Pure talent and charisma and like gods they were terrible together. Awful. A gorgeous nightmare.
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Jess Walter |
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b3d3b04
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Divination of true nature. Of motivation. Of desirous hearts. I saw the whole world in a flash and I recognized it at once: We want what we want.
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Jess Walter |
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376d6f7
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You had to write it, and he had to play it, and I'm just so grateful I got to see it.
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Jess Walter |
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5f8e69a
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on the street they moved with purpose, at different speeds but in straight lines, like a thousand bullets fired at a thousand different angles from a thousand different guns. All of these people moving in the way they thought right . . .
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Jess Walter |