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2185c06
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She meant I was hungover. I had been slaughtered, legless, trolleyed, slashed, shredded, plastered, polluted, pissed. I thought, I do love my country's relationship with alcohol. How would I ever exist in the United States? I suppose I would have grief counselling instead. (77)
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Peter Carey |
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36f6b2a
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Many is the night I have sat by the roaring river the rain never ending them logs so green bubbling and spitting blazing in a rage no rain can staunch.
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Peter Carey |
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3ef50cb
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At the Annexe, at this early hour, I delete you, my darling, my beloved, with your wide soft mouth against my neck. I would rather scrub your bones and place them in the open air, scrub your sternum, labour at your spine, scrub and scrub, with love, each vertebra, as particular as a nose, and lay you in the grass amongst the bluebells. There on your secret triangle of land I would be your most submissive tenant, would lie beside you until r..
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Peter Carey |
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cd89376
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It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice, but also one of great beauty, silvery, curved, dancing with light.
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Peter Carey |
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1b29b3c
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They had sat here, in this very room, their knees almost touching, and there had been a sense of almost breathless discovery, and while they had not become lovers everything was laid out, like a feast, and they were merely arranging the table decorations and putting out the place names, the final little touches, so that when the feast began it would have been a splendid thing, not only satisfying to the baser appetites but to the higher sen..
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Peter Carey |
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afcbc44
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Your American, you wouldn't know if you were up yourself.
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Peter Carey |
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9dd84c1
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Years later when she was being eccentric, had shed her corset and let her arse spread unhindered by anything but her perpetual dressing gown.
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Peter Carey |
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5f0f8b6
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Descartes said that animals were automata. I have always been certain that it was the threat of torture that stopped him saying the same held true for human beings. Neither I nor Matthew had time for souls. That we were intricate chemical machines never diminished our sense of wonder, our reverence for Vermeer and for Monet, our floating bodies in the salty water, our evanescent joy before the dying of the light.
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Peter Carey |
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6341179
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The most puzzling thing in the entire encounter occurred at a certain stage very late in the conversation, when she discovered she had been talking to a man. She had the feeling of a dream where things and people transmogrify, characters dissolve from one to the other like tricks in a film, monsters in a bottle. She had the sense, the very distinct sense, of her companion's female gender; she had been pleased to find it, had relaxed into it..
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Peter Carey |
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97a590b
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There are problems with the wombat," Nathan Schick said. "I was interested in wombats in '29. I went up to your zoo in Sydney and looked at the wombat. The fellow said you could train them but God, Herbie, no offence... Lee-Anne... but the wombat is not star quality."
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Peter Carey |
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21d1a38
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They watched the flying foxes wheel above them, like shadows of thoughts, things so indistinct they would not exist without two witnesses.
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Peter Carey |
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c349b9d
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no, I thought, only what it makes you do, clawing at the trees, splintering the bark like a tomcat, the blind and violent need of it, a joy, but who would not want to be relieved of it. I pity
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Peter Carey |
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b2af2fe
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it was born out of habits of mind produced by Christianity: that if you sacrificed yourself you would somehow attain the object of your desires. It was a knife of an idea, a cruel instrument of sacrifice...
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Peter Carey |
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55ebe71
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And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the ..
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Peter Carey |
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30e6330
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The camera observed me, but there was nothing in my bag except a pashmina, purse, and Lorazepam. I carried emptiness. Doors opened. Another camera recorded my progress. Doubtless there were thousands of my days repeated thus, interred digitally in limbo. I ascended two steps with nothing to look forward to,
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Peter Carey |
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ae85f6e
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Pritcha za peperudata: Biakh v Bogota i chakakh da doide edna moia priiatelka. Biakh vliuben, beshe predi mnogo-mnogo godini. Chakakh tseli tri dni. Biakh gladen, no ne smeekh da izliaza za khrana, da ne bi tia da doide, a men da me niama. I togava, na tretiia den, se pochuka. Spusnakh se po stariia koridor, no v'n, na sl'nchevata ulitsa, niamashe nikoi. - Samo - kaza Vins Dzhoi - edna peperuda otlitashe.
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Питър-Кари
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Peter Carey |
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32ded51
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Said he the fact of the matter is I am a rat charmer. Thats very nice but do you want the flour or not I can't stand here all day discussing it. I'll give you my two pennies said the old fellow and the benefit of my rat charming. I have no rats. Thats for me to know. What do you mean by that you stinky old galoot do you think I do not know my own house and what is in it? Never you mind what I mean my name is Kevin the Rat Charmer and that i..
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Peter Carey |
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1039e7f
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Democracy] is as without plans as it is without energy, as incapable of harm as it is incapable of good. It is powerless and passive. It lets society marcher tout seul without trying to direct it. Well, in the present state of affairs, it is perfect, no? In order to prosper? America does not need either leadership or deep-laid plans or great efforts, but liberty and still more liberty. The reason for this is that no one yet has any interest..
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Peter Carey |
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27eb06f
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You're discussing recreational drugs?" He stood and shut the door and came back looking very serious indeed. I was chastened, as I should have been. "Sorry. What have I never minded about?" "Well, I have truthfully always imagined it was my talent, my gift to introduce my friends to each other. Not one I could ever use for my own happiness, I must say."
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Peter Carey |
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d429a2d
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Harry saw his death as if it was someone else's. He watched himself from outside his body and he wasn't scared at all... he found that he could slide between the spaces in the air itself. Ecstasy touched him. He was stroked by something that felt like trees, cool, green and leafy. It occurred to him that he died, and he got scared. He felt walls like membranes which shivered with pain and a sound, a terrible sound which promised meaningless..
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Peter Carey |
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fb358ea
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I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago. I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather apron, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then. He said, "You will have been resp..
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Peter Carey |
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edb3eb4
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A mother can have no secrets in a settler's hut but she cannot so much as break wind and all her children must hear what she has done but now she were far away from Fifteen Mile Creek and no longer could I guess her life. I were told she took laundry and perhaps she did but I am sure she only did what she must do. She had a mother and father and brothers and sisters but in the end she were a poor widow and she had 7 children and all of them..
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Peter Carey |
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8c49a4b
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All Butcher's previous politeness was revealed as so much bad milk floating in a cup of welcome tea...
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Peter Carey |
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bd8b481
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Joel was only twenty-six but there was about him the sense of something over-ripe and gone to seed. He was not tall, and not exactly fat. But once noticed, immediately, those large red lips, which hovered on that balancing point where sensuality becomes greed. His fleshy face was a trifle too smooth and the skin glistened like a suspect apple which had been waxed to give it extra sales appeal.
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Peter Carey |
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eb0da4b
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Sex makes a man dishonest with himself, as is well known. I feared the slippery ambiguity of false feeling, of expediency, of things not being exactly true.
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Peter Carey |
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a338d72
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Remember, this is the country of the duck-billed platypus. When you are cut off from the rest of the world, things are bound to develop in interesting ways.
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peter-carey
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Peter Carey |
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5243667
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He would never believe, in his wildest dreams ,that she no longer loved him. She had said it once, but he would dismiss these sorts of things as "temperament" or "wine" as if a bottle contained an infusion of foreign thoughts with which she had innocently poisoned herself."
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Peter Carey |
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20c4961
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She could see herself still blushing and he was looking at her with those big dark eyes, as if he knew. But that was a trick of his, not an intentional trick but a misleading sign. He saw nothing.It looked as if he could see everything and people always gave him credit for it.
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Peter Carey |
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37091c1
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At the end of the day the fence were still not complete but my family had witnessed my new strength and they I could be the man
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Peter Carey |
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92116d6
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He held back nothing of himself in his effort to please his audience
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don-t-hold-back
no-holding-back
performing
please-like-me
please-others
selflessness
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Peter Carey |