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bfe622e
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But this flower comes in the form of a human; it must soon succumb to disease, atrophy, ruined skin, broken teeth, the unbearable frailty of mortality.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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c0a2ae0
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Her mouth smiled, smiled hard, but her eyes did not smile, ever. Her eyes watched and looked for something they knew they'd never find.
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emotion
eyes
smile
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Mary Gaitskill |
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72f511e
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God famously doesn't afflict Job because of anything Job has done, but because he wants to prove a point to Satan. Twenty years later, I am sympathetic with my first assessment; to me, in spite of the soft radiant beauty of many of its passages, the Bible still has a mechanical quality, a refusal to brook complexity that feels brutal and violent. There has been a change, however. When I look at Revelation now, it still seems frightening and..
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Mary Gaitskill |
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520d89f
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loading your brain with subliminal messages.... How loathsome to turn a sadistic murder into entertainment [in the newspaper] -- and yet how hard not to read about it. What dark comedy to realize that you are scanning for descriptions of torture as you disapprove. Which of course only makes it more entertaining. "But naturally I was hoping they'd report something grisly," you say to your friends, who chuckle lighthearted acknowledgment of h..
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gaitskill
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Mary Gaitskill |
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4095125
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E]very morning her body worked like the crew of a sinking ship, when all she had to do was get out the door in the morning.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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4ec5939
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Of course, not every single person was lonely, but he guessed that she was. She seemed in need of comfort and care, like a stray animal that gets fed by various kindly people but never held.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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5d8c032
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But he felt disoriented and depressed amid these shifting, lunging, grabbing people from all over the country, who had been in his life for hours and were now about to disappear, taking their personal items and habits with them.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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e9e1fa9
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This late-adolescent camaraderie gave their time at Meadow a fraught emotional quality that was like the shimmering fullness of a bead of water before it falls. They were all about to scatter and become different from one another, and this made them exult in their closeness and alikeness.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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88c891e
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early breasts
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Mary Gaitskill |
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ea295a6
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She doesn't think that the mean people she knows are the most passionate; they just want to laugh at everything. But then she remembers that she laughed when a boy in class played a joke on an ugly girl and made her cry.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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3744fbe
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Quando ero piccola mia madre mi lesse una storia su una ragazzina cattiva. La lesse a me e a mia sorella: ce ne stavamo rannicchiate contro il suo corpo sedute sul divano, mentre lei leggeva ad alta voce un libro che teneva sulle ginocchia. La luce della lampada splendeva su di noi, avvolte da una coperta. La ragazza della storia era bella e crudele. Sua madre era povera, percio la mandava a lavorare per una famiglia di persone ricche che l..
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Mary Gaitskill |
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14f23fa
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But life can give a lot. If you can't see inside the heart no matter how you look, then why not look? Why not see as much as you can? How is that disrespectful? If you are only given one look, shouldn't you look as fully as you can?
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Mary Gaitskill |
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8049248
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Of course, Veronica had a lot of smart cracks stored up. She needed them. When she didn't have them, she was naked and everybody saw.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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fcd20e7
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The singer's voice is thin and fake, but it's pretty, and somewhere in the fakery is the true sadness of smallness and failure and believing in beautiful things that aren't real because that's the only way to get through.
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sadness
singer
singer-s-voice
singing
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Mary Gaitskill |
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9a1bcc1
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girl,
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Mary Gaitskill |
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f77b32f
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feel like the bright past is coming through the gray present and I want to look at it one more time.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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81e5157
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I loved them like you love your hand or your liver, without thinking about it or even being able to see it. But my music made that fleshly love feel dull and dumb, deep, slow, and heavy as stone. Come, said the music, to joy and speed and secret endlessness, where everything tumbles together and attachments are not made of sad flesh.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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d95e498
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They say dogs are man's best friend," he said. "But horses are man's best slave."
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horses
slave
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Mary Gaitskill |
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a30229e
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Today I'm Yours." It was a crude and romantic song. But human feeling is crude and romantic."
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Mary Gaitskill |
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4b830ad
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She was starved hurting limbs.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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bb0ef0a
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But prettiness is always about pleasing people. When you stop being pretty, you don't have to do that anymore. I don't have to do that anymore. It's my show now.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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bd280a9
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Valiantly, he tried to bring his soul to life in the small thing through which it had to live, and it was crushed, again and again.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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190abd9
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I watched voyeuristically, knowing I was peeping at people in the middle of a collective dream. I imagined myself among them, part of the regimental dance, the teacher's rosy heat, the huge mobile hope of happiness and vitality. And as I watched, it suddenly occurred to me I had been merely watching the world all my life.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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87abee7
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Ho fatto cose che sembrano autodistruttive tutta la vita. Ma in realta non avevo nessuna intenzione di distruggermi. Ho sempre saputo dov'era il limite. Fino ad ora.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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097c932
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He looks like somebody wandering in a dark maze, clutching his little bit of goodness, knowing it's all he's got but not remembering what it is or how to use it.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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243122a
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Maybe it would be better to hold her winglike shadow safe in the lock of his memory than to touch the breathing girl and lose her.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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a261a29
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I left the sadomasochist dump with a girl from the south of France named Simone. She was wearing a tight blue dress with red wine spilled down the front of it. She was so drunk, she didn't care. "Fuck it," she kept saying in English, "you know?" The tattooed doorman called out an endearment to us as we emerged for his cave... We linked arms and walked. Simone was talking about her new boyfriend, but I didn't listen. I was thinking about Lis..
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Mary Gaitskill |
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13dc16a
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My ambition was to live like music.
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Mary Gaitskill |
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d4d3e2c
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Somebody once said to me if you want to be understood, don't write fiction.
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Mary Gaitskill |