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14fbd62
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I like the rain before it falls. of course there is no such thing, she said. That's why it's my favorite. Something can still make you happy, can't it, even if it isn't real.
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Jonathan Coe |
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054c494
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Some people don't realize that a straight 'No' can be the kindest answer in the world.
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Jonathan Coe |
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c940859
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Sometimes I feel that I am destined always to be offstage whenever the main action occurs. That God has made me the victim of some cosmic practical joke, by assigning me little more than a walk-on part in my own life. Or sometimes I feel that my role is simply to be a spectator to other people's stories, and always to wander away at the most important moment, drifiting into the kitchen to make a cup of tea just as the denouement unfolds.
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Jonathan Coe |
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bfd9dbb
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Yes - I've learned from my mistakes, and I'm sure I could repeat them perfectly.
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Jonathan Coe |
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02c2690
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Objectivity is just male subjectivity.
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Jonathan Coe |
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8ed04ec
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words are tricky little bastards, and very rarely say what you want them to say [...]
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Jonathan Coe |
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a97a3c2
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I don't mind summer rain. In fact I like it. It's my favourite sort.' 'Your favourite sort of rain?' said Thea. I remember that she was frowning, and pondering these words, and then she announced: 'Well, I like the rain before it falls.
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Jonathan Coe |
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6a5fc2c
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We say, 'Shall we meet for a drink?', as though drinking were the main end of the appointment, and the matter of company only incidental, we are so shy about admitting our need for one another. [...] We say, 'Would you like to come for some coffee?', as though it were less frightening to acknowledge that we are heavily dependent on mildly stimulating drinks, than to acknowledge that we are at all dependent on the companionship of other peop..
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Jonathan Coe |
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de2b4ca
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I was going to say 'my friend Stuart', but I suppose he's not a friend any more. I seem to have lost a number of friends in the last few years. I don't mean that I've fallen out with them, in any dramatic way. We've just decided not to stay in touch. And that's what it's been: a decision, a conscious decision, because it's not difficult to stay in touch with people nowadays, there are so many different ways of doing it. But as you get older..
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Jonathan Coe |
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179322d
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The upshot was that she lost her religion - with a vengeance - and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.
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Jonathan Coe |
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543a2b1
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quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perche la persona assente si e trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non e immaginario. Cosi e a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perche e reale.
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Jonathan Coe |
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f2f9137
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As for human contact, I'd lost all appetite for it. Mankind has, as you may have noticed, become very inventive about devising new ways for people to avoid talking to each other and I'd been taking full advantage of the most recent ones. I would always send a text message rather than speak to someone on the phone. Rather than meeting with any of my friends, I would post cheerful, ironically worded status updates on Facebook, to show them al..
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human-contact
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Jonathan Coe |
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07dc88d
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These pieces, he already realised, were merely stepping stones at the start of a journey towards something - some grand artefact, either musical, or literary, or filmic, or perhaps a combination of all three - towards which he knew he was advancing, slowly but with a steady, inexorable tread. Something which would enshrine his feelings for Cicely, and which she would perhaps hear, or read, or see in ten or twenty years' time, and suddenly r..
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Jonathan Coe |
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cecf992
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Me gusta la lluvia antes de caer. Ya se que no existe. Por eso es mi favorita. Porque no hace falta que algo sea de verdad para hacerte feliz, ?no?.
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lluvia
jonathan-coe
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Jonathan Coe |
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d236fbe
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Yes, she would have been partial to men, perhaps she might even have confined herself to one man in particular, if only she had been able to find one who shared her view that intimacy between two people was of value irrespective of whether it led to sticky conflux.
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Jonathan Coe |
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bced3ff
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Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide In me, no lunar power can reverse; But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied A sightlessness tonight: or something worse, A disregard that made me feel unmanned. Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath To think I saw my future traced in sand One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death," And pray for an oblivion so deep It ends in transformation. Only dawn Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep..
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poem
the-house-of-sleep
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Jonathan Coe |
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73e692a
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There's a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it.
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Jonathan Coe |
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7661007
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You didn't take part, Benjamin?" Gunther asked, as he passed me a plate of cheese and cold meat. "My brother doesn't play games," said Paul. "He's an aesthete. He sat by the window all afternoon with a funny look on his face: probably composing a tone poem."
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Jonathan Coe |
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660e359
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He waited in silence for the blindfold to be tied firmly at the back of his head. 'Right,' said Wilkins, emphatically. 'That should do. How many fingers am I holding up?' 'Three,' said Thomas. 'God damn it to hell, how did you know that? Can you see through the cloth?' 'No. It was a guess.' 'Well you're not supposed to guess. For crying out loud, I'm trying to make sure that you can't see where we're going. We're not here to play guessing g..
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Jonathan Coe |
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72fe7ac
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he was the proud owner of a quite colossal member, which on the many awestruck occasions it had been exposed to public view had been compared variously to a giant frankfurter, an overfed python, a length of led piping, the trunk of a rogue elephant, a barrage balloon, an airport-sized Toblerone and a roll of wet wallpaper.
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Jonathan Coe |
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e40062e
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Half an hour later, as I was deeply immersed in the story of The Man of the Hill, that curious, lengthy digression which seems to have nothing to do with the main narrative but is in fact its cornerstone..
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Jonathan Coe |
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505857f
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Am I the same person that I dream about?
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Jonathan Coe |
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9aeafa8
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Well, I thought you might want to listen to this. I mean, I thought you might be . . . ready for it. "I don't know if you remember, but just before . . . just before Malcolm died, he took me to see a concert in the town. We went to Barbarella's, and we heard all these weird bands. You remember the kind of music he used to like? Well, the people who made this record were playing that night, and they were his favourite. He liked them more tha..
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Jonathan Coe |
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3b7efdd
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Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie. He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait." I was already waiting. What else was there to do? "Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?" At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the s..
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Jonathan Coe |
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37d610f
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Apo to kentro tou kathe trapeziou, metakinetheke ena mikro kukliko kommati, san katapakte, apo kheria pou etan sten arkhe orata* kai mesa apo kathe anoigma pou demiourgetheke, emphanisteke ena antriko kephali. Exenta diaphoretika antrika kephalia se exenta diaphoretika trapezia. Ta somata tous paremenan kato apo ta trapezia, aorata. (...) <>, eipe to kephali. <
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live-menu
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Jonathan Coe |
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9c51219
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They sat and drank their pints. The tables in which their faces were dimly reflected were dark brown, the darkest brown, the colour of Bournville chocolate. The walls were a lighter brown, the colour of Dairy Milk. The carpet was brown, with little hexagons of a slightly different brown, if you looked closely. The ceiling was meant to be off-white, but was in fact brown, browned by the nicotine smoke of a million unfiltered cigarettes. Most..
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Jonathan Coe |
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9d8ffd5
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Das Pub. Das Britannia. Ein uriges altes Wirtshaus, so britisch wie ... der Bowlerhut und Fisch und Chips, stellvertretend fur die beste Gastlichkeit, die unser Land zu bieten hat.<< Mr Ellis erschauderte. >>Die armen Belgier. Das wollen wir ihnen also zumuten, ja? Wurstchen mit Kartoffelbrei und Schweinspastete von vorletzter Woche, heruntergespult mit einem Pint lauwarmes Bitter. Leute sind schon wegen weniger ausgewandert.<<
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Jonathan coe |
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d690edc
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Le auto sono come le persone. Ogni giorno andiamo in giro in mezzo alla ressa, corriamo di qua e di la, arrivando quasi a toccarci ma in realta c'e pochissimo contatto. Tutti quegli scontri mancati. Tutte quelle opportunita perse. E' inquietante, a pensarci bene. Forse e meglio non pensarci affatto
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Jonathan Coe |
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a2f2f36
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You're right, Margaret, absolutely right. Things have changed a lot, even since I've been here. It's a different place now. Better in some ways, worse in others." "Better!" she echoed, scornfully."
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Jonathan Coe |
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0d9621b
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Can you make her out at all?' Benjamin shrugged. As usual, in Cicely's presence, he was afraid of appearing inarticulate, and as usual, this fear robbed him of his power of speech.
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Jonathan Coe |
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6b87af6
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Well, he and his wife had both been devout evangelicals for a while. They had these two kids and then she had an incredible job giving birth to the next one. The upshot was that she lost her religion - with a vengeance - and walked out on him, taking these three daughters with her. Faith, Hope and Brenda.
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Jonathan Coe |
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7fb6dee
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A volte mi sento come se fossi destinato a essere sempre dietro le quinte quando arriva una scena madre. Come se Dio mi avesse scelto come vittima di un cosmico tiro mancino, assegnandomi poco piu di una comparsata nella mia vita. Altre volte mi sento come se non avessi altro role che quello dello spettatore di storie di altra gente e per di piu fossi condannato a lasciare il mio posto sempre al momento cruciale, e andare in cucina a farmi ..
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Jonathan Coe |
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335603b
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Growing up where she did, Beatrix had developed a romantic and adventurous nature, and she had no outlet for it any more. The happiest times I can remember spending with them were when we drove out - twice, I think - to the Long Mynd for a picnic. Roger had long since traded in his motorbike and scraped together enough money to buy a second-hand Morris Minor. Somehow we all squeezed into this (I seem to recall sitting in the front passenger..
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shropshire
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Jonathan Coe |
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e5d0da9
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Well, there'll be an outcry, of course, but then it'll die down and something else will come along for people to get annoyed about. The important thing is that we save ourselves a lot of money, and meanwhile a whole generation of children from working-class or low-income families will be eating nothing but crisps and chocolate every day. Which means, in the end, that they'll grow up physically weaker and mentally slower.' Dorothy raised an ..
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Jonathan Coe |
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59a0a57
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Live life as it was meant to be lived. Half asleep, preferably. [...] She preferred [...] to go to sleep at once, sleep now being one of the very few aspects of existence for which she felt any degree of enthusiasm [...]
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Jonathan Coe |
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37651e2
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these questions gave way, in the course of time, to a different preoccupation, namely, a slow and growing awareness of familiarity with the landscape into which she was being carried. A familiarity based not on the sighting of particular landmarks, but on her feeling that the very contours of the hills and fields, and the very shapes and colours of the buildings, now appeared as surviving monuments to the existence of a much earlier self wh..
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Jonathan Coe |
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f5de77d
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life only starts to make sense when you realize that sometimes - often - all the time - two completely contradictory ideas can be true. Everything that led up to you was wrong. Therefore, you should not have been born. But everything about you is right: you had to be born. You were inevitable.
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Jonathan Coe |
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82107cc
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None of this made any sense to Benjamin, however hard he tried. Roll-Up Reg was talking another language. But then, he was no more persuaded by the things his parents told him, or the teachers at school. It was the world, the world itself that was beyond his reach, this whole absurdly vast, complex, random, measureless construct, this never-ending ebb and flow of human relations, political relations, cultures, histories . . . How could anyo..
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Jonathan Coe |
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f410cbf
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Os carros sao como as pessoas. Movemo-nos em circulos todos os dias, corremos daqui para ali, passamos a centimetros uns dos outros, mas ha muito pouco contacto real. Tantos desencontros. Tantos <>. E assustador, quando pensamos nisso. Provavelmente, o melhor e nao pensar.
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Jonathan Coe |
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5b2ab82
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If there was one kind of hat Terry despised above all others, it was the baseball cap. There was nothing wrong with children wearing it, of course, but whenever he saw it on the head of an adult it seemed to symbolize everything that he most hated about America, even more potently than the figure of Mickey Mouse or the latest Coke adverts or the hordes of giant yellow 'M's which were even now beginning to advance across Britain like an unch..
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Jonathan Coe |
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0a13e76
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To kolpo einai na kaneis panta skandalode pragmata. Den uparkhei logos na pernas mia skandalode nomothesia kai meta na dineis stous allous to khrono na proetoimastoun skhetika. Prepei na parembaineis amesos kai na ten epikalupteis me kati akoma kheirotero, protou e koine gnome prolabei na katalabei to kako pou te breke.
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Jonathan Coe |
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b786bfc
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Aveva degli occhi azzurri penetranti e intelligenti che avrebbero certamente inchiodato i miei con la forza e la fissita del loro sguardo, se io non li avessi deliberatamente evitati, preferendo soffermarmi sulla carnagione leggermente screziata e sui suoi folti capelli ramati.
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Jonathan Coe |
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ba2ba8f
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Emu vdrug prishlo v golovu, chto on dvizhetsia po zhizni kak vo sne i kogda-nibud' (let etak cherez tridtsat') on prosnetsia lish' zatem, chtoby uvidet': ego vremia na etoi zemle podoshlo k kontsu, a on ne uspel urazumet' i maloi toliki proiskhodiashchego.
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Jonathan Coe |
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d119340
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Quello che in letteratura la gente chiama ironia, di solito nella vita vera si chiama dolore, incomprensione e disgrazia [...].
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Jonathan Coe |