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42bb29a
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She had destroyed whatever was between us by making a profound gaffe: She met me.
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Steve Martin |
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cb8e12c
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Now you see . . . they' re not fit for humans . . ." "Put them on me."
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Steve Martin |
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2684aa4
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If you saw her in these moments, you might think she was collecting her thoughts in order to go forward. But I see it another way: Her mind is being overwhelmed by two processes that must simultaneously proceed at full steam. One is to deal with and live in the present world. The other is to re-experience and mourn something that happened long ago. It is as though her lightness pulls her toward heaven, but the extra gravity around her keeps..
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life-and-living
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Steve Martin |
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741102a
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Mirabelle is not affected by a man's failures to approach her, as her own self-depreciating attitude never allows the idea that he would in the first place.
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Steve Martin |
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248b6fb
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I couldn't see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, "I am Picasso." And I said, "Well, so what?"
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Steve Martin |
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42097c1
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she is nearing forty and not so easily forgiven as when her skin bloomed like roses.
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truth
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Steve Martin |
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0a85094
|
She looked down again and I was stymied. I sat. Oh, this was enough to make me love her, because I was right with her, understanding every second and longing to step in. I didn't even need to know the specific that was troubling her, because to me her halting voice easily stood for the general woe that hangs in the air, even on life's happiest days.
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Steve Martin |
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1ce4d87
|
a young man, Jamaican, perhaps, his head circled in a scarf with sunbleached dreadlocks on piled on top, looking like a plate of soft-shell crabs.
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Steve Martin |
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f94540c
|
Comedy is a distortion of what is happening, and there will always be something happening.
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humor
comedy-humor
comedy
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Steve Martin |
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2a78636
|
It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored.
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Steve Martin |
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670eacd
|
So, while fitting in, she was like a wicked detail standing out against a placid background.
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Steve Martin |
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e8cf170
|
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
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Steve Martin |
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ebd1178
|
What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This..
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Steve Martin |
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7f7fd19
|
teaching is, after all, a form of show business.
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comedy
teachers
teacher
teaching
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Steve Martin |
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08af68b
|
It was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: Like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the abominable circumstances.
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Steve Martin |
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b58e01e
|
He never complicates a desire by overthinking it, unlike Mirabelle, who spins a cocoon around an idea until it is immobile.
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Steve Martin |
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8598425
|
I could dream it forever and still not do it, but when the time comes for it to be done, God, I want to be ready for it, to be ready for the moment of convergence between the thing done and the doing of it, between the thing to be made and its maker. At that moment, I am speaking for everyone; I am dreaming for the billions yet to come; I am taking part of us that cannot be understood by God, and letting it bleed from the wrist onto the can..
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Steve Martin |
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4d631e2
|
She didn't even finish her last sentence; it just trailed off. I think the subject had changed in her head while her mouth had continued on the old topic, not realizing it was out of supplies.
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Steve Martin |
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cd4e784
|
The Matisse seemed to respond to the decreasing light by increasing its own wattage. Every object in the room was drained of color, but the Matisse stood firm in the de-escalating illumination, its beauty turning functionality inside out, making itself a more practical and useful presence than anything else in sight.
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Steve Martin |
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25fc7c5
|
He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
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Steve Martin |
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cd3b1a7
|
So she viewed time spent in the land of the normal as an investigation into the world of marriage-worthy men, even if she was unsure about her own interest in marriage. There must be one solid citizen who also had a spark of life, a sense of humor and adventure.
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Steve Martin |
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9576d42
|
As she sits in a booth, it never occurs to her to observe herself, and thus she is spared the image of a girl sitting alone in a bar on Saturday night. A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps within her, waiting to be stirred. .... She keeps working to make connections, but the pile of near misses is starting to ..
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Steve Martin |
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2cdcf23
|
If you occasionally wonder how I know about some of the events I describe in this book, I don't. I have found that--just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience.
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Steve Martin |
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1c7c24c
|
She started converting objects of beauty into objects of value.
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Steve Martin |
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96f3855
|
To Mirabelle, the idea of being an object of obsession is alluring and represents a powerful love. She fails to understand, however, that men become obsessive over beautiful women because they want no one else to have them, but they fall in love with women like Mirabelle because they want a certain, specific part of them.
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Steve Martin |
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dd84f1d
|
Lacey was just as happy alone as with company. When she was alone, she was potential; with others she was realized. Alone, she was self-contained, her tightly spinning magnetic energy oscillating around her. When in company, she had invisible tethers to anyone in the room: as they moved away, she pulled them in.
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Steve Martin |
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841508c
|
Finally, we do become wise, but then it's too late
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Steve Martin |
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b367e09
|
Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus Be dull and boring and omnipresent
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steve-martin
|
Steve Martin |
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ef330ba
|
Be tasteless, rude, and offensive, Live in a swamp and be three dimensional,
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steve-martin
|
Steve Martin |
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99c4c82
|
The overhead lights reflect in the glass countertop and mingle in the gray and black of the gloves, resulting in a mother-of-pearl swirl that sometimes sends Mirabelle into a shallow hypnotic dream.
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Steve Martin |
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8c9fdbc
|
He knows only what is right in front of him; she is aware of every incoming sensation that glances obliquely against her soft, fragile core
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Steve Martin |
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aafd6e3
|
I'm smart enough to know that Elizabeth had no doubt seen dozens of men leap over curbs without her falling in love with the leaper, but I do believe this: When an endeavor is special in a person's life, others discern it intuitively and appreciate it more, like the praise a child receives for a lumpy clay sculpture. And as ordinary as such an event might be, it can be instilled with uncommon power.
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Steve Martin |
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7ea4a82
|
Thinking too much also creates the illusion of causal connections between unrelated events.
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Steve Martin |
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bbdbd07
|
She has simply never quite learned to walk or hold herself comfortably
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Steve Martin |
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8746d97
|
But my mother was aglow. She had a continuing fascination with celebrities, and now she had one of her own. She was never moved by what I was doing (in an interview she said, "He writes his own material, I'm always telling him he needs a new writer")..."
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Steve Martin |
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9e58cb9
|
Mirabelle is not sparkling tonight, because she works only in gears, and tonight she is in the wrong gear. Third gear is her scholarly, perspicacious, witty self; second gear is her happy, giddy, childish self; and first gear is her complaining, helpless, unmotivated self. Tonight she is somewhere midshift, between helpless and childish.
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Steve Martin |
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36d8adf
|
An artist who painted a face was now 'playing with the idea of portraiture,' or 'exploring push-pull aesthetics,' or toying with contradictions like 'menacing-slash-playful,' but he or she was never, ever, just painting a face.
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hilarious-nerd
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Steve Martin |
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86c56fa
|
People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio Morandi, most of them no bigger than a tea tray. Their thin browns, ashy grays, and muted blues made people speak softly to one another, as if a shouted word might curdle one of the paintings and ruin it. Bottles, carafes, and ceramic whatnots sat in his paintings like small animals huddling for warmth, and the..
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matisse
morandi
picasso
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Steve Martin |
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d68b656
|
The woman speaks, stops, then after what must have been a long speech by the person on the other end of the line, says, "... just remember, darling, it is pain that changes our lives." Mirabelle cannot fathom the meaning of this sentence, as she has been in pain her whole life, and yet it remains unchanged."
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Steve Martin |
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6f1f4ea
|
The auction houses seemed not as dull as their financial counterparts on Wall Street, where parents of daughters imagined glass celings and bottom patting.
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Steve Martin |
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c45a053
|
They told me to just "act like myself." When I said, "How do I do that?" they said to just have fun with it, but I'm not sure what they meant."
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Steve Martin |
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44fb8f3
|
She knows that she needs new friends but introductions are hard to come by when your natural state is shyness.
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Steve Martin |
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4949563
|
I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a by-product. The course was more plodding than heroic: I did not strive valiantly against doubters but took incremental steps studded with a few intuitive leaps.
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perseverance
success
|
Steve Martin |
|
35718fa
|
Mirabelle attracts men of a different kind. They are shyer and more reticent. They look at her a long time before approaching, and when they do find something about her that they want, it is something simple within her.
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Steve Martin |