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9a0f981
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What chimps don't seem capable of understanding is the state of false belief. They don't have a theory of mind that accounts for actions driven by beliefs in conflict with reality. And really, who lacking that will ever be able to navigate the human world?
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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025e0f3
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But a story never told is also a danger, particularly to the people in it.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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9d0c985
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There are moments in history that seem like a mist, as if what really happens matters less that what should have happened. The mists lift suddenly and there we are, my good parents and their good children, their grateful children who phone for no reason but to talk, say their good-nights with a kiss, and look forward to home on the holidays. I see how, in a family like mine, love doesn't have to be earned and it can't be lost. Just for a mo..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d239f23
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Apparently, all you needed to be considered normal was no evidence to the contrary.
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weird
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d81590c
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So many problems, however infinitely varied they first appear, turn out to be matters of money. I can't tell you how much this offends me.
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root-causes
problems
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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ed76b98
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In the feudal fiefdom of school, rank was determined early. You could change your hair and clothes. You could, having learned your lesson, not write a paper on Julius Caesar entirely in iambic pentameter or you could not tell anyone if you did. You could switch to contact lenses, compensate for your braininess by not doing your homework. Every boy in school could grow twelve inches. The sun could go fucking nova. And you'd still be the same..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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1a18bb3
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Scully was appallingly gregarious--so outgoing she was practically incoming.
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wordplay
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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596559c
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Maybe anosognosia, the inability to see your own disability, is the human condition and I'm the only one who doesn't suffer from it.
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outsider
self
different
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d1366f0
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Fair warning, as it turned out--kindergarten is all about learning which parts of you are welcome at school and which are not.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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90e4114
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We all have a sense of level. It may not be based on class exactly anymore, but we still have a sense of what we're entitled to. People pick partners who are nearly their equal in looks. The pretty marry the pretty, the ugly the ugly. To the detriment of the breed.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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a96b89c
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He referred to the human brain as a clown car parked between our ears. Open the doors and the clowns pile out.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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26a8f3d
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There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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2e4e5b9
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In 2004, Jacques Derrida said that a change was under way. Torture damages the inflicter as well as the inflicted. It's no coincidence that one of the Abu Ghraib torturers came to the military directly from a job as a chicken processor. It might be slow, Derrida said, but eventually the spectacle of our abuse of animals will be intolerable to our sense of who we are.
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abuse-of-animals
damage
jacques-derrida
sense-of-being
torture
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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0369d35
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My sister, Fern. In the whole wide world, my only red poker chip.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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609169a
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who knows you better than your own brother?
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family
siblings
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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b1c691e
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Dean coughed helpfully. Somewhere in the cough was the word "persuasion." He was throwing Mo a lifeline. Mo preferred to go down. "I haven't actually read any Austen. I'm more into mysteries, crime fiction, courtroom stuff." This was disappointing, but not damning. On the other hand it was a failing; on the other, manfully owned up to. If only Mo had stopped there. "I don't read much women's stuff. I like a good plot," he said. Prudie finis..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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099f5d3
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Life is all arrivals and departures.
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life
departures
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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9be71df
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A man says something. Sometimes it turns out to be the truth, but this has nothing to do with the man who says it.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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201994c
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I'd no particular ambitions beyond being either widely admired or stealthily influential--I was torn between the two.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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68b1d05
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We are so excited that, in the strangely illuminating phrase my mother favours, we're completely beside ourselves.
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phrase
mother
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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7085f66
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It was one of her delightful qualities; she wept with those who wept.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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029c976
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There was no point in telling my father. He'd never let me quit after only one day. He couldn't help me and he'd make some terrible blunder if he tried. Parents are too innocent for the Boschian landscapes of middle school.
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parents
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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50a5d40
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There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned, to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face.
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character
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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f4b6ebd
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Here is my objection to submarines and space travel: not enough windows. What difference does it make if you're in outer space or underwater, or wherever, if you can't feel, or hear, or see or smell it?
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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d6d0238
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the happening and the telling are very different things. This doesn't mean that the story isn't true, only that I honestly don't know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how to tell it.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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6c6f9c2
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Without our listening, all the stories are the same story.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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83d943f
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An oft-told story is like a photograph in a family album; eventually, it replaces the moment it was meant to capture.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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ec55527
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Poor Elinor! Willoughby on one side, Brandon on the other. She is quite entre deux feux." Prudie had a bit of lipstick on her teeth, or else it was wine. Jocelyn wanted to lean across and wipe it off with a napkin, the way she did when Sahara needed tidying. But she restrained herself; Prudie didn't belong to her. The fire sculpted Prudie's face, left the hollows of her cheeks hollow, brightened her deep-set eyes. She wasn't pretty like All..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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48e85fd
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Do unto others' is an unnatural, inhuman behavior. You can understand why so many churches and churchgoers say it but so few achieve it. It goes against something fundamental in our natures. And this, then, is the human tragedy--that the common humanity we share is fundamentally based on the denial of a common shared humanity.
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human-tragedy
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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cf05f59
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It was one of those subjects to which everything that slithers across your brain seems relevant. I find this to be true of most topics.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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0c98fd9
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Up on the Magdalen Islands, eight crew members from the Sea Shepherd sprayed more than a thousand seal pups with a harmless but permanent red dye. This dye was designed to ruin their pelts and save the pups from hunters. The activists were arrested and, in pitch-perfect Orwellian double-speak, charged with violating the Seal Protection Act.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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c7d8ef2
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He didn't believe animals could think, not in the way he defined the term, but he wasn't much impressed with human thinking, either. He referred to the human brain as a clown car parked between our ears. Open the doors and the clowns pile out.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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1f9f376
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A nonhuman animal had better have a good lawyer. In 1508, Bartholome Chassenee earned fame and fortune for his eloquent representation of the rats of his French province. These rats had been charged with destroying the barley crop and also with ignoring the court order to appear and defend themselves. Bartholome Chassenee argued successfully that the rats hadn't come because the court had failed to provide reasonable protection from the vil..
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history
humour
lawyers
law
rats
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karen joy fowler |
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4c61312
|
An "attack on SeaWorld" might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesn't always seem to distinguish between the two."
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terrorism
government
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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e80bee7
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IN MOST FAMILIES, there is a favorite child. Parents deny it and maybe they truly don't see it, but it's obvious to the children. Unfairness bothers children greatly. It's hard to always come in second.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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cfa541e
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There are moments when history and memory seem like a mist, as if what really happened matters less than what should have happened.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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888b75c
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We call them feelings because we feel them. They don't start in our minds, they arise in our bodies,
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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25b34a1
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A night that began with mind-reading a grateful crustacean and ended with drunken elves would be a night to remember.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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81f2d3c
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Emotion and instinct were the basis of all our decisions, our actions, everything we valued, the way we saw the world. Reason and rationality were a thin coat of paint on a ragged surface.
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reason
rationality
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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028cd98
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A quote hung on the opposite wall: "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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2c233f7
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IN EVERYONE'S LIFE there are people who stay and people who go and people who are taken away against their will.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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6ada3da
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The only way to make any sense of the United States Congress, our father told me once, is to view it as a two-hundred-year-long primate study.
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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56472de
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It was long past time to change the subject. "The boy playing the bagpipes is really good," Prudie said. If only she'd said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. "Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something." Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn't tell anyone what she'd said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school f..
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Karen Joy Fowler |
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a712ad8
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There's no data to suggest that I can make you love me whatever I do.
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science
love
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Karen Joy Fowler |