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25a1835
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No, I want to take you out back and beat your fucking head on the floor.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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1435ee9
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All reality about me now appeared to be in tatters, taken down and reduced to the civil war of its particles. I held on very, very tight indeed.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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796e895
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But the weight of her anguish over Gregory - this one missing airman, this unreliable, perhaps unworthy man - filled her whole upper half, diaphragm, lungs, ribs, shoulders, with such crushing gravity that the sighs with which she was obliged to displace it shook her entire body.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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f78379a
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I suppose it was a dream that lasted really about fifty years. By the time universal education had begun to work properly, say 1925, and the time the first teachers started to hold back information, say 1975. So a fifty-year dream." "I think what's happened is that because they themselves know less than their predecessors, innovators and leaders today have remade the world in their own image. Spellchecks. Search engines. They've remodeled t..
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knowledge
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Sebastian Faulks |
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c3203f1
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This intimacy is not necessary; no one is compelling me to open my inmost self and lay it naked, undefended, against that of another - merely for the joy of the communion.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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f6f65ba
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Currents of desire and excitement that she had not known or thought about for years now flooded in her. She wanted him to bring alive what she had buried, and to demean, destroy, her fabricated self.
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self
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Sebastian Faulks |
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3c1a8c7
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I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I'll make sure I never end up here, either.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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d7d0b73
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Until we can navigate in time, I'm not sure that we can prove that what happened is real.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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0e8b997
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This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far men can be degraded.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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5eb6234
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A problem is only insoluble to the sufferer; to others, it may have a comic or exasperating simplicity. It occurred to me that at this juncture I had become locked in, like one of my wretched patients for whom the moment for an easy solution has passed. I couldn't go forward in my life - whatever remained of it - until I had a better understanding of what was past. This was the 'hard work' that as a young therapist I had glibly recommended ..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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e7ec8b5
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Then under the indifferent sky his spirit left the body with its ripped flesh, its infections, its weak and damaged nature. While the rain fell on his arms and legs, the part of him that still lived was unreachable. It was not his mind, but some other essence that was longing now for peace on a quiet, shadowed road where no guns sounded. The deep paths of darkness opened up for it, as they opened up for other men along the lines of dug eart..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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01dcd1f
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With no blame there's no shame. A human society can't exist without shame. Shame is like handedness or walking upright. It's a central human attribute. In fact, it's the first human quality ever recorded.' 'Where?' 'Genesis, Chapter Three. The covering of nakedness. The acquisition of shame was the first consequence of consciousness, of the speciating moment. Take shame from me and you are calling me pre-human.
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humanity
consciousness
shame
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Sebastian Faulks |
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5ddd346
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To wake up and feel enlivened; to be in a hurry to get out of bed and into the day. To have friends you want to speak to, compare experiences with and be on the phone to...Well, to be honest, I'm still some way from that.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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1e6e565
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Until she had had children of her own she had not been able to contemplate the death of either of her parents; when the subject had arisen, in conversation or in her own imagining, she had said only: I just don't know what I'd do.
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family-relationships
growing-up
parenting
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Sebastian Faulks |
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8ff08b9
|
So the Bible is not so sad in the end?' 'Yes, it is the saddest book in the world. We are asked to believe that God has played an infantile trick on us: he has made himself unobservable, as an eternal test of "faith". What I read, though, is the story of a species cursed by gifts and delusions that it cannot understand. I read of exile, abandonment and the terrible grief of beings who have lost something real - not of a people being put to ..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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fc8f338
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I am something of a connoisseur of the country pile and I must say {he} had done himself remarkably well. At a guess I would say it was from the reign of Queen Anne and had been bunged up by some bewigged ancestor awash with loot from the War of the Spanish Succession or some such lucrative away fixture.
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humor
luxury
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Sebastian Faulks |
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e466615
|
And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and lying down to sleep in what felt like a coffin and being hungry and ashamed all day and night and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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420c351
|
But it was only the twentieth century in Europe that had universal education and the belief in progress - a net gain of knowledge among all. And that's now been abandoned as a goal." "Why?" "It was too difficult. People weren't prepared to put in the hours on the donkey work - you know, dates and facts and so on. I think in retrospect my generation will be seen as a turning point. From now on there'll be a net loss of knowledge in Europe. T..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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1994906
|
What is the most real thing you can think of?"] Jacques thought for a long time before answering; he tried to weigh up what was most vital and enduring in all that he had known. Eventually, no longer smiling, he said, 'Memory'."
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memory
nostalgia
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Sebastian Faulks |
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2d8316c
|
I liked slicing through the beige brain when it had been fixed; the texture reminded me of cooked cauliflower. It was wonderful to hold this shrunken organ in your hands, the formaldehyde running down over your wrists, and picture the billion firing synapse that for many years had made the cauliflower believe that it was Fred.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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af1f052
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I saw an old woman dressed in seatcovers, sewn into a dress, a man in a jacket made from a flag. It gave them an air of desperate grandeur, like guests at an asylum ball.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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749836e
|
Busy is good, isn't it? Busy means we're hard at it, achieving our ends or "goals." Haven't had time to stop, or look around or think. That's considered the sign of a life well lived. Although people complain of it - another year gone, where did that one go? - tacitly, they're proud. Otherwise they wouldn't do it: you put your time where your priority is."
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Sebastian Faulks |
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03741d0
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Albert Einstein wrote, 'A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe", a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by ..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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98ac7da
|
And sometimes in life, I imagine, good things do happen. Most of the time, it's the opposite, obviously. But I don't think you should rule out the possibility that just occasionally chance might deal you a good card.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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53d3fe1
|
At other times I sit and wait. If nothing comes, I've discovered that it's better just to write something - anything. You can always tear up the piece of paper and throw it away. But if you don't begin, then nothing comes. You have to submit.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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9aacf5d
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A time before Flanders and Auschwitz had shown that, given the means of killing and the opportunity to use them, the species, far from being a pinnacle in creation, was actually lower on the scale than all others in its genus or family.
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humanity-and-society
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Sebastian Faulks |
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c293892
|
And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, ..
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Sebastian Faulks |
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7f78ed2
|
Under the treaty of Sevres in 1920 Greece had been given Smyrna, and by 1922 the Greek army was trying to push its way up the Aegean coast. The Turks, however, had found a leader in Mustafa Kemal (Kemal Ataturk) with no regard for treaties and a committed hatred of the Greeks. He drove their army back into Smyrna, and then did what any Turkish leader would have done: massacred them.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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1929d80
|
The Turks moved in the next day and killed everyone in sight, including the staff of the nursing home.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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6186321
|
Alcohol provokes stupidity; opium provokes wisdom.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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3041b0e
|
What had gone completely was the memory of what made her human, her ways and her thoughts. The withholding of these details was like a torment. When he tried to bring her back to mind, he could not hear the voice, he could not imagine one aspect of her, the way she looked or talked, the expressions of her face, her walk, her gestures. It was as though she were dead and he bore the responsibility for killing her.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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54457ba
|
She had grown accustomed to people's responses to her. Many of them assumed that there was a polar choice between marriage and work and that the more enthusiastically she had embraced her job, the more vigourously she must have rejected the idea of children or male partnership. Elizabeth had given up trying to explain. She had taken a job because she needed to live; she had found an interesting one in preference to a dull one; she had tried..
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women
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Sebastian Faulks |
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b6e3604
|
the following September I started at the grammar school. This was in a red-brick building of the kind beloved by Victorian optimists. In
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Sebastian Faulks |
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7880d80
|
she had discovered that ageing and what they called "maturity" were myths, that all the years did was disqualify you from various pleasures, one by one."
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Sebastian Faulks |
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c5ca147
|
How do you 'clear' your thoughts? You have only other thoughts with which to do the job; 'thoughts', therefore, are both blockage and broom. I suppose what we mean is that we should stop reasoning and try to 'feel' - which presumes that what we 'feel' is more valuable than anything we think ...
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Sebastian Faulks |
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05ef6f8
|
It was more wonderful than making love with a negro boxer on Mr Singer's billiard table.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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39b71c7
|
Cheers,' she said as I left, 'and don't forget you're seeing Matt and I on Monday.' I thought for a moment she'd said 'matineye', an East End pronunciation of 'matinee'. Was I meant to review it?
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grammar
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Sebastian Faulks |
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e12ecba
|
I've missed you, Frank.' 'I haven't breathed since you left.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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a126b87
|
In God's name, she thought, let the more loving one be someone else; for me it is beyond endurance.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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068533c
|
Yet on the dusky veranda she had seemed like a force of nature that had somehow sought out the landscape of his longing and moulded itself to each contour.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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6a7f9a0
|
Now I see my children and I know that they are figures in a lantern show, that their sense of permanence is an illusion, because all around us time is unstoppable.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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7e2a35a
|
The deeper into the sensation she went, beneath his weight and his urging, the more it was like going into a room of utter darkness, which she felt was familiar from a time before her birth; it was something other, or beyond; it was like death, or very near it.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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4bfc1ed
|
In Frank I have found something beyond me, beyond my understanding, this is where some incredible core of me is destined to be even if not in this life.
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Sebastian Faulks |
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2d3a604
|
I will think of you every day. All the time. If ever you should think of me and wonder what I'm doing, I'm thinking of you. That's all I'll be doing. Nothing else.
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romantic
|
Sebastian Faulks |