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0e55110
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To be a kid is to be invisible and to listen, and to interpret things that aren't necessarily meant for you to hear--because how else do you find out about the world?
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Maile Meloy |
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fde8794
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His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.
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Maile Meloy |
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5cacf30
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She craved a family, not having had enough of one to understand what a pain in the ass it was.
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spy-vs-spy
short-story
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Maile Meloy |
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fe2e02e
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Now, alone on the roof, Valentine looked at her shoes and wished people would either stay or go away, but not constantly coming back and leaving again.
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Maile Meloy |
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f09252c
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The force with which he wanted it both ways made him grit his teeth. What kind of fool wanted it only one way?
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Maile Meloy |
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84081dd
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At the simplicity of the gesture, he felt a pang: the raw nerve of his loneliness exposed.
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Maile Meloy |
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bc143be
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Children were experiments, and his had failed.
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Maile Meloy |
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2f5d57a
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We have to think of a question that we wouldn't otherwise want to answer.' He stood over the pot, looking down at the leaves. 'Something like, Who do you fancy?' 'That might work,' I said, even though it was the last question I wanted to answer. But it was impossible, suddenly, to tell a lie. Benjamin took a deep sniff over the steam and turned to me. 'All right,' he said. 'So who do you fancy?' I hesitated. 'Fancy means like, right?' I sai..
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the-apothecary
young-love
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Maile Meloy |
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c42a665
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We're creating little hedonists,' Frank used to say. 'Nothing will be as pleasurable as this for the rest of their lives. They'll search everywhere for something that can measure up, and nothing will.
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Maile Meloy |
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3b2a3cb
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I guess if everyone was blind, and you tried to describe vision to them, it would sound crazy and made up.
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Maile Meloy |
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ebfe993
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Diabetes is passed that way -- over and down, like a knight in chess.
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family
spy-vs-spy
short-story
genetics
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Maile Meloy |
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d409bb0
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Whenever we tamper with natural laws, there are consequences," the count said. "The larger the disruption, the larger the consequence."
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Maile Meloy |
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afda20d
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He was acting like the man he wanted to be, in hopes that he could become him. He would keep acting until he couldn't stand it anymore, and then he would be the man he was.
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Maile Meloy |
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99d958d
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All the while, Everett felt both the threat of disorder and the steady, thrumming promise of having everything he wanted, all at once.
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Maile Meloy |
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009bfc3
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He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door.
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Maile Meloy |
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c70dc7b
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Chet suddenly wished she had quit teaching the class because of him, that he'd had any effect on her at all.
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Maile Meloy |
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da67666
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When they started to drain a swamp where birds and fish had lived, for a new housing development down the road from his apartment, Steven watched the protests and the preparations with interest. The bird people were furious, the developers unmovable, and Steven was filled with relief that the fight wasn't his. Nothing here was his... He thought there should have been something sad about how little he was tied up with the place, but instead ..
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Maile Meloy |
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c3abf33
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There's a look little girls have who are adored by their fathers," Bea said. "It's that facial expression of being totally impervious to the badness of the world. If they can keep that look into their twenties, they're pretty much okay, they've got a force field around them. I don't know if Jonna ever had it. I think she's always known about the bad things."
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Maile Meloy |
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3e78a23
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One aspect of human resilience, in all its marvelousness, was the ability to recalibrate, to adjust to new circumstances with astonishing speed.
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Maile Meloy |
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83faa7c
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you--die?
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Maile Meloy |
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8e5c97c
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People regressed, around their families, to the age at which they had been angriest.
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Maile Meloy |
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c97877f
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They could talk about shallow things without judgment and deep things without self-consciousness.
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Maile Meloy |
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ce06dd3
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But the commandments were absolute. The stone tablets Moses brought down from the mountain had not said Thou shalt not kill except when fighting Nazis, or in self-defense, or in some other situations, listed below. Thou shalt not steal unless thou art near death with hunger fighting in a just cause, or hath a family to support, or if perhaps an irresistible opportunity to get rich presenteth itself.
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Maile Meloy |
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311cc4d
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They had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids' adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment... She'd been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn't her favor-ite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn't she just read the fucking thing with gusto and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her a..
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reading
life
kid
judgment
hero
child
childhood
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Maile Meloy |
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ed9d9a2
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It takes experience to know what is a catastrophe (Richard Hughes, 'A High Wind in Jamaica'),
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Maile Meloy |
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b9185af
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and braking,
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Maile Meloy |
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933b2c4
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He who delays the hour of living rightly is like the rustic who waits for the river to run out.
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Maile Meloy |
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9dc1c07
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But how could you measure your own pain against the pain of the world?
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Maile Meloy |
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52fb860
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Maybe the Fates snipped with their scissors when they wanted to snip.
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Maile Meloy |
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54bba36
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Benjamin called it "estro-lock," the way the two women could talk for hours and lose track of time. They ended up in conversation across any table, screening out noise from kids and men. They could talk about shallow things without judgment and deep things without self-consciousness."
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Maile Meloy |
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74fde96
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Civilization, her mother had told her since she was small, was a series of agreements about what was good for everyone, enforced by law. And civilization was only a thin veneer over the savagery and greed that were the human default.
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Maile Meloy |