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3eff57d
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I found him. It was easy. The Church always seems to know where its priests are, even when they're traveling. He remembered me. His hair had turned almost all gray, but he still had his kindly, hesitant manner. "I told him the truth, exactly what had happened. "'The child was conceived out of wedlock,' he said, 'but the child's father was supposed to have been killed in the war. If you marry the mother now, you can adopt him. Then we will "..
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Mark Helprin |
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33e0acb
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I returned to the university only after the Second World War, and, even then, not having been in the resistance, I had political difficulties." "Why weren't you in the resistance?" "I was tired. And you have to have a certain temperament. You have to be fixed on the point. You need what politicians have, which is the absence of a sense of mortality. It comes, like a drug, from adoration and deference. Revolutionaries get it from dreams. The..
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Mark Helprin |
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ecdf676
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I've never touched a woman," Nicolo said, in deep despair. "You will. It'll take you years to learn what to do--not because it's a matter of technique, but precisely because it isn't. It's a matter of deep understanding, and of love. Nowadays, people have a problem with sex, I think. Popular culture is obsessed with it. It has become almost a sickness. It never was when I was a boy, and when I was in my prime."
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Mark Helprin |
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5a5b92a
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I suppose that's because you have faith in the judicial system that will try us." "Yes. I have faith that we will be found guilty and that we will be shot." "Your faith will be rewarded." "Why? It hasn't been for the last few years."
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Mark Helprin |
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b2995ce
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You're crazy," Ludovico announced. Alessandro held his finger in the air. "Ah!" he said, "but at least I'm able to tell you my last name, and at least, when they take me out to the stake my dreams may be just beginning, whereas yours, by your own definition, must and will come to a dark end." "You fool yourself. Your illusions will fall away even before the end. They won't do you any good. You'll see."
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Mark Helprin |
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147dae0
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Alessandro," his father said, almost cheerfully. "You don't understand. This kind of problem is very special: it has no solution"
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Mark Helprin |
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1626c1a
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I don't have a system." "Theology is a system." "Not my theology." "Then what is it?" "What is it? It's the overwhelming combination of all that I've seen, felt, and cannot explain, that has stayed with me and refused to depart, that drives me again and again to a faith of which I am not sure, that is alluring because it will not stoop to be defined by so inadequate a creature as man. Unlike Marxism, it is ineffable, and it cannot be explai..
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Mark Helprin |
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145ff70
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The difference between men and women," Alessandro went on, "is something that I've enjoyed a great deal. I would almost say that I wish I had enjoyed it more, except that at least half was the feeling that arose from restraint and modesty--and you have to go lightly with those, as I did. And perhaps I did it just right, even if at the time I thought I wasn't bold enough. I don't know, but here, at the end, I see that the most beautiful thin..
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Mark Helprin |
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de6c7d6
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What, exactly, are you talking about?" "I'm talking about love." "I'm unconvinced." "I wasn't attempting to convince you. I'm now sufficiently tranquil not to have to convince anyone of anything." "Will you be tranquil in front of the firing squad?" "I don't know. We'll see tomorrow. You'll be able to watch from the window." Alessandro winked at Ludovico, to show him that he was undisturbed. "The way you winked," Ludovico said accusingly, "..
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Mark Helprin |
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217b5a7
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You'll be shot," they cautioned. "No. I won't be shot. I'm going to shoot them, and then I'll go home. I'll be perfectly safe. I can see the future, and the clouds are lifting." "You can see the future? How can you see the future?" "I know enough now about the patterns of the past to see the darkness of the future unraveling before the golden light of time. Behind the clouds is the dawn. How can I possibly know such things? The fact is, I d..
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Mark Helprin |
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35e6883
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Alessandro learned yet again that the joy of escape is better than the joy of merely being free.
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Mark Helprin |
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c89ec4a
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Better to have a font of money in middle age than when you're young. Middle age is the time when you'll need it and appreciate it." "I'll never appreciate it. I've been trained out of it. I don't want money. I want much more. I want what rarely happens. I want what people are afraid even to imagine." "Like what?" "Resurrection, redemption, love."
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Mark Helprin |
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30d1206
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The difference between classes of men is that the vast majority remember youth as their glory, and the tiniest fraction, in escaping a life of drudgery and increasing difficulty, finds something even better.
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Mark Helprin |
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bd20a29
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I'm a critic. I write essays about works of art. It's like being a eunuch in the seraglio, but unrequited love is the sweetest, and I have the proper distance. I can compress the qualities of beauty I've been trained to see, store them up, and bring them out at will, rapid-fire, in the combinations I want.
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Mark Helprin |
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fd63320
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Mortification of the flesh." Nicolo drew back almost imperceptibly. "What do you think we just did?" Alessandro asked. "This walk, for days and nights in the open air, without sleep, under sun, moon, and stars, is mortification of the flesh. Like thundering music, it agitates the spirit until it rises. In Islam the Sufis and Dervishes use drugs to accomplish this. We're Christians, we don't. We launch our souls from the cannons of art and d..
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Mark Helprin |
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f777ff9
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When I got back to Rome I discovered that the Italian army considered me dead--in Gruensee, in the observation post, and on the Cima Bianca. That I was reported killed three times seemed not to affect their trust in the reports except to strengthen it. Being the army, they must have thought that anyone who was killed three times was most certainly deader than if he had been killed only once.
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Mark Helprin |
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2b6bb92
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I don't want an ambulance. I want you to sit down and shut up." "But Signore, an ambulance could take you to a hospital. They could help you." "I don't want to die in a hospital." "You wouldn't! You'd live!" Alessandro closed one eye. "I don't want to be alive in a hospital, either."
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Mark Helprin |
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bf33f01
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It hasn't been so easy for me, either," Alessandro said. "Not recently. But I'll die before I'm mad like you." "That's your choice," Orfeo told him. "Me, as surely as I stand upon this commode, I'll have the power to wait for the gracious sap. I'll wait in fog, rain, or on the mountaintop, but I'll wait, and the blessed sap will come, and do you know what it will do? I'll tell you. It will fuck the typewriter." Alessandro was stunned. Still..
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Mark Helprin |
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bde6acc
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Alessandro sat up straight. "How is it you think babies are born?" "Something the mother and father do before sex, some sort of cloth or herb or hard-boiled egg that the father puts in the mother or something, with a rubber bulb and a glass dish." "No," Alessandro said. "That's not quite it." "No?" "No. You just have to have sex--if you're married, fifty times; if you're not married, once." "You're kidding!"
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Mark Helprin |
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79b5eee
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When I was in school," Strassnitzky said, "I went out one morning in my riding clothes and shod in heavy boots, and as I left the last step I came down on a young bird that had been resting at the foot of the stairs, having been savaged by a hawk. My weight on it pushed the air out of its lungs, and when I turned to see what had made that unearthly noise, the bird looked at me in such a way that I knew that even animals have souls. Only a c..
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Mark Helprin |
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4eaf7fa
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I was put in charge, made a general, and sent into Serbia, where, by dint of my own ingenuity, we served honorably but did not kill a soul. And that, believe me, is very hard with the Serbs, because they are very ingenious themselves, and they have a passion for martyrdom. "I've been a field marshal for two years. I have so many medals that when I wear them I look like a window in a junk shop."
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Mark Helprin |
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f1d1fa3
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Hoheit, do you know why crows are black?" "No, I never thought of it." "They taste lousy, and they're black as a sure sign to predators that they're crows, who will taste lousy." "Why aren't they yellow?" "They live in cold climates, and black absorbs heat. They don't need camouflage, so they can take advantage of the way their color soaks up the sunlight." "Why do you ask me these questions?" Klodwig demanded. "To remind you, Hoheit, not t..
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Mark Helprin |
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6b19584
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A benevolent act is like a locust: it sleeps until it is called.
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Mark Helprin |
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5752c3b
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Craig Binky siedzial w widocznym miejscu i to, co nastapilo w tej chwili, nie umknelo uwadze ani jednej osoby. Zlapal sie za piers i brew, jakby dostal zawalu i udaru jednoczesnie, po czym zaczal sie krzywic, wykonujac serie min, ktorych ekspresja zawstydzilaby prawdziwego mima.
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Mark Helprin |
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d4fc790
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To the sight of the swallows dying in mid air, Alessandro was finally able to add his own benediction. "Dear God, I beg of you only one thing. Let me join the ones I love. Carry me to them, unite me with them, let me see them, let me touch them." And then it all ran together, like a song."
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Mark Helprin |
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96e7d80
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How, in good conscience," Alessandro asked, "can you ride across the countryside in perfect safety, as if you were on holiday, stopping mainly to swim and eat oysters, while men are crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches?" "Because the object of war is peace, and I have merely thrown out the middle. If everyone did the same, no one would be crushed and pulverized in the filth of the trenches." "Everyone doesn't have the privile..
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Mark Helprin |
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83653ea
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Then came the matter of food. For ten hours he picked grains of rice off the floor and collected pasta, sugar, and individual tea leaves. He would not eat anything that had been tainted with blood, and was left with less than a third of his rations. Some things--powdered cocoa, for example--were uncollectible, or had risen on the wind. He had kerosene enough for one pot of boiling water and one hour of lamplight each day. Some of his blanke..
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Mark Helprin |
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474d302
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At this instant, Alessandro was electrified, as if lightning had struck the telephone wire or Saint Elmo's fire had filled the room, for part of the dream that he could not recall had come back to him with full force.
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Mark Helprin |
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a1bc656
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Loyalty is the elixir that makes death easy, but it's also the quality that gives life purpose.
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Mark Helprin |
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d185aa2
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what happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.
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Mark Helprin |
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886a0a6
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Honor is a complex and important matter best served by doing the right thing.
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Mark Helprin |
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a679aa0
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For someone who is happy, celebration is yet another channel or instrument through which happiness may course. For someone who is not, celebration is a tedious parody of existence that seems pointless and false.
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Mark Helprin |
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6f4bbc5
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The last time the Right Honourable Gentleman raised the accusation about the policies of this government forcing his constituents to resort to inedible foods--in that case, as I remember, it was ants, earwigs, and glowworms--the National Health looked very seriously into the matter, and their inspectors. . . ." "Division! Division!" cried out some who had got the scent of blood, and Mallet Scuffs himself, successfully diverted, cried out, "..
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Mark Helprin |
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6c5dff3
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Nothing is predetermined, it is determined, or was determined, or will be determined. No matter, it all happened at once, in less than an instant, and time was invented because we cannot comprehend in one glance the enormous and detailed canvas that we have been given - so we track it, in linear fashion piece by piece. Time however can be easily overcome; not by chasing the light, but by standing back far enough to see it all at once. The u..
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Mark Helprin |
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0f53507
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Because two propositions can be true at once," he said. "Because the world is imperfect. Because we are imperfect. Because sometimes we're called upon to do terrible things. And because we define ourselves in dying, which is," he indicated by motioning with his head toward the arena, "what this is. Give us at least that."
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resilience
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Mark Helprin |
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2349a18
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battle--a sense that time does not exist, that he himself was of no account, that all things were connected and orchestrated far beyond human will, and that the world was saturated with beauty no matter what the loss.
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Mark Helprin |
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e050d92
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Souls," he said, "like rays of light, exist in perfect, parallel equality, always. But when for infinitely short a time they pass through the rough and delaying mechanism of life, they separate and disentangle, encountering different obstacles, traveling at different rates, like light refracted by the friction of things in its path. Emerging on the other side, they run together once more, in perfection. "For the short and difficult span whe..
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Mark Helprin |
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42b4512
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Harry understood that those left behind--the failures and the deformed, the suffering and the dead--are not just equal in soul, but that they are we and we are they. Struggle as we may for distinction, soon enough we fail, and, without exception, follow.
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Mark Helprin |
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d873e98
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Don't worry about me, no matter what happens. We're nervous here, but not afraid. We have all looked into our souls, one way or another, and are content to die if need be. The only thing left to say is that I love you.
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war
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Mark Helprin |
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8910104
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You're always condemned to die. It's just a matter of timing.
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Mark Helprin |
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1e9d669
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You don't do things by halves. If you love a woman, you love her entirely. You give everything. You don't spend your time in cafes; you don't make love to other women; you don't take her for granted. Do you understand?
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Mark Helprin |
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0c724d6
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His existence is not a question of argument but of apprehension. Either you apprehend God, or you do not.
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Mark Helprin |
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91b7f8e
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I can tell you only that beauty cannot be expressed or explained in a theory or an idea, that it moves by its own law, that it is God's way of comforting His broken children.
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god
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Mark Helprin |
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d4a4aa0
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They come down here for their own benefit. It's as clear as day that they love it. The great irony and perfect joke is that the wretches on the bottom of the barrel get these self-serving scum as champions. Some champions! They feed off the poor--first materially, and then in spirit. But they deserve each other in a way, because vice and stupidity were made to go together. "I know that, you see, because I was poor. But I rose like a rocket,..
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Mark Helprin |