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4077d87
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When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner s..
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love
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Lisa Unger |
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73eb729
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I think most people are just trying to be happy, and that most of their actions, however misguided, are in line with that goal. Most people just want to feel they belong somewhere, want to be loved, and want to feel they're important to someone. If you really examine all the wrongheaded and messed-up things they do, they can most often be traced back to that basic desire. The abusers, the addicted, the cruel and unpleasant, the manipulators..
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sadness
life-lessons
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Lisa Unger |
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039d0f5
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I can get my head turned by a good-looking guy as much as the next girl. But sexy doesn't impress me. Smart impresses me, strength of character impresses me. But most of all, I am impressed by kindness. Kindness, I think, comes from learning hard lessons well, from falling and picking yourself up. It comes from surviving failure and loss. It implies an understanding of the human condition, forgives its many flaws and quirks. When I see that..
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Lisa Unger |
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ed6d88c
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The Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead you to it.
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trust
truth
secrets
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Lisa Unger |
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74a6a6f
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When you love someone, it doesn't really matter if they love you back or not. Having love in your heart for someone is its own reward. or punishment, depending on the circumstances.
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Lisa Unger |
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388a0e4
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It's strange how memory gets twisted and pulled like taffy in its retelling, how a single event can mean something different to everyone present.
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recollection
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Lisa Unger |
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f114237
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Many people believe that evil is the presence of something. I think it's the absence of something.
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Lisa Unger |
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16c1cf0
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I loved him so much. It didn't change all the reasons we couldn't be together, but it kept me returning to his body, kept my skin seeking his skin over and over again in the sad dance we did.
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Lisa Unger |
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7d3cc61
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We may say we're looking for love, following dreams, chasing the dollar, but aren't we just looking for a place where we belong? A place where our thoughts, feelings, and fears are understood? - Ridley Jones
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Lisa Unger |
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f5116a7
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Everyone always talks about how well mothers know their children. No one ever seems to notice how well children know their mothers.
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Lisa Unger |
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95e7af9
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Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost ..
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questions
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Lisa Unger |
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f8927db
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People who stay in the same town with the same friends for their entire lives never get a chance to find out who they can really be, because they will always be considered as who they were.
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Lisa Unger |
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aea4c43
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Love accepts. Forgiveness comes in time.
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love
lisa-unger
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Lisa Unger |
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7c7e5a6
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Motherhood was an ever widening circle of good-byes.
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Lisa Unger |
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de2267d
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How many people can you claim truly care about you? I mean, not just the people in your life who are fun to hang out with, not just the people who you love and trust. But people who feel good when you are happy and successful, feel bad when you are hurt or going through a hard time, people who would walk away from their lives for a little while to help you with yours. Not many. I felt that from Jake and I wasn't sure how to handle it. Becau..
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Lisa Unger |
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95c1429
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And we stood like that. The joining of hands is highly underrated in the acts of intimacy. You kiss acquaintances or colleagues, casually to say hello or good-bye. You might even kiss a close friend chastely on the lips. You might quickly hug anyone you knew. You might even meet someone at a party, take him home and sleep with him, never to see him or hear from him again. But to join hands and stand holding each other that way, with the ele..
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Lisa Unger |
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775aaf1
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In the end, I cared about him so much that I just thought he deserved someone who loved him more than I did.
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Lisa Unger |
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4592d25
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Depression is not dramatic, but it is total. It's sneaky - you almost don't notice it at first. Like a cat burglar, it comes in through an open window while you're sleeping. It takes little things at first; your appetite, your desire to return phone calls. Then it comes back for the big stuff, like your will to live. Then next thing you know, your legs are filled with sand. The thought of brushing your teeth fills you with dread, it seems l..
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psychological
suspense
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Lisa Unger |
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989f3d0
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What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn't mean that you're saying it's all right now, or that you've forgotten the wrong. It just means that you've drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn't hurt as much. That's all.
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Lisa Unger |
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0c261fa
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Hope is good. Without it, well, you do the math. But hope has to be like a prayer. Putting it out there to something more powerful than yourself.
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Lisa Unger |
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37c2aa6
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I think we draw people into our lives. It's as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals.
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Lisa Unger |
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5d26d67
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Bored people looked for drama and caused trouble.
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Lisa Unger |
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8b239bc
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The past is history. The future is a mystery. The present is a gift.
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Lisa Unger |
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7c23d7e
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You [meaning mothers] said good-bye a little every day -- from the minute they left your body until they left your home.
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Lisa Unger |
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b12711b
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We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she'll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They'll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days. But there's no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love. Jung would say that this is because, even culturally, our anima is..
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Lisa Unger |
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ce7213c
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in the end it's not just the big and small events that make you who you are, make your life what it is, it's how you choose to react to them-that's where you have control over your life.
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who-you-are
life-events
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Lisa Unger |
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b403dfb
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It's a little known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make your problems disappear. But of course they can only do this as long as you're a child. When you've become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they're not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that's why so many of us take our ti..
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Lisa Unger |
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00e5cef
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There have been plenty of chances to close my eyes and go back to the sleep of my life as it was, but I hadn't taken any of them. Do I wish now that I had? It's hard to answer that question, as the wraiths move closer.
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Lisa Unger |
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1918ac6
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Parenthood wasn't about blood or biology, he found; it was about a joyful willingness to give yourself over, to subordinate your own needs for someone else's. When you loved your kids, you'd give up everything to keep them safe and make them happy, and you didn't care about the other things, the ones that went away.
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Lisa Unger |
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11fa3bb
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It was a strange lightness, a drifting feeling. Zero gravity. I understood that everything that once seemed solid and immovable might just float away. And that this was a truth of life, not an illusion in the grieving mind of a child. Everything that is hard and heavy in your world is made up of billions of molecules in constant motion offering the illusion of permanence. But it all tends toward breaking down and falling away. Some things j..
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Lisa Unger |
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15f170f
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But did you know that eyewitness testimony is often totally unreliable? The human memory only records events through the filter of its own frame of reference. We try to fit the information we receive into schemas, units of knowledge that we possess about the world that correspond with frequently encountered situations, individuals, ideas, and situations. In other words, we often see things as we expect to see them, or want to see them, and ..
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Lisa Unger |
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dec114d
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When our actions and choices are based on fear and denial ... Well, nothing good can come of that. Ever.
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Lisa Unger |
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f23fe0c
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We had a great friendship, good sex, a shared passion for the dinosaur room at the Museum of Natural History and Haagen-Daz French Vanilla ice cream. But love is more than the sum of its parts, isn't it?
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Lisa Unger |
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e670a88
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Emily looked into his eyes. They were blank, unreadable. That was the worst kind of person, the scariest--the one who'd learned to keep his feelings out of his eyes. Or who didn't feel anything at all. Emily had known people like that; they were the destroyers. They took things--everything you worked for, all your silly dreams--and smashed them beneath their boots for no reason at all.
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eyes-the-true-expression
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Lisa Unger |
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c5ec27b
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Shock is the stepsister of denial. It cushions the blow to your psyche when really fucked up things happen.
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Lisa Unger |
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32a51be
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They don't find peace. It's pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don't deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.
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Lisa Unger |
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39cb4aa
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We can't hold on to anyone or anything, you know. We lose everything except that which we carry within us.
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Lisa Unger |
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a5b2418
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Every couple starts off loving each other, don't they? It's how a relationship ends that really defines its nature.
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Lisa Unger |
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7041046
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an awareness of your own worth is the most attractive quality in the world.
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Lisa Unger |
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bd74343
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I didn't see the point of judging and analyzing a single moment in someone's life.
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Lisa Unger |
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e8df36b
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Is the prey complicit in its own demise? Are we not seduced in some small way by the beauty, the grace, even the dangerous soul of the predator?
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Lisa Unger |
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8c56e79
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It sounded to him like the noise of too many mouths that talk and too few minds that think.
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Lisa Unger |
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f2a2952
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What we think of as our "gut instincts" are really a very complex mosaic of past experiences, deep-seated hopes, fears, desires."
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Lisa Unger |
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135a154
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I thought about my brother. I hated him. Hated him like a child hates a fallen hero. I hated him for his unlimited potential and his failure to realize it. I hated him because I could see everything that was wonderful about him, how brilliant, how beautiful he was, and how he had turned his back on everything he could have been, cast it off like a designer suit for which he'd paid an obscene sum and never wore.
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Lisa Unger |