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45b2c6b
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The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.
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love
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Tom Robbins |
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f20d17e
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disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....
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magic
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Tom Robbins |
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dc15ac0
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Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won't adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is to sign on as its accomplice. Instead of vowing to honor and obey, maybe we should swear to aid and abet. That would mean that security is out of the question. The words "make" and "stay" become inappropriate. My love for you has no strings attached. I love you for free."
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Tom Robbins |
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8b3f8cc
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It's never too late to have a happy childhood.
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youth
innocence
children
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Tom Robbins |
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48a58df
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When two people meet and fall in love, there's a sudden rush of magic. Magic is just naturally present then. We tend to feed on that gratuitous magic without striving to make any more. One day we wake up and find that the magic is gone. We hustle to get it back, but by then it's usually too late, we've used it up. What we have to do is work like hell at making additional magic right from the start. It's hard work, but if we can remember to ..
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magic
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Tom Robbins |
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ce60dc8
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Who knows how to make love stay? 1. Tell love you are going to Junior's Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay. 2. Tell love you want a momento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the ..
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love
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Tom Robbins |
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8c8516d
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We are our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
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Tom Robbins |
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6059925
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There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.
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life
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Tom Robbins |
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9bd4398
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The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.
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unhappiness
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Tom Robbins |
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5aa1d26
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A sense of humor...is superior to any religion so far devised.
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Tom Robbins |
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673d196
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Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not. Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end. Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm. There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay? Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.
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questions
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Tom Robbins |
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d13aee6
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Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.
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Tom Robbins |
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cd43961
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Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it in, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route.
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Tom Robbins |
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55459f1
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There are only two mantras, yum and yuck, mine is yum.
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Tom Robbins |
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36c98e1
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Conversation between a princess and an outlaw: "If I stand for fairy-tale balls and dragon bait--dragon bait--what do you stand for?" "Me? I stand for uncertainty, insecurity, bad taste, fun, and things that go boom in the night." "Franky, it seems to me that you've turned yourself into a stereotype." "You may be right. I don't care. As any car freak will tell you, the old models are the most beautiful, even if they aren't the most efficie..
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women
rescuing
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Tom Robbins |
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b8b5aa0
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All depression has its roots in self-pity, and all self-pity is rooted in people taking themselves too seriously." At the time Switters had disputed her assertion. Even at seventeen, he was aware that depression could have chemical causes. "The key word here is roots," Maestra had countered. "The roots of depression. For most people, self-awareness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. It's about that time that we start..
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self-awareness
one-woman-s-opinion
mentor
self-pity
opinion
teacher
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Tom Robbins |
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f6edc2b
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There are two kinds of people in this world: Those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.
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humor
philosophy
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Tom Robbins |
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e2fd4f5
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You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous about risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something that ..
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Tom Robbins |
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8a8f28d
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My faith is whatever makes me feel good about being alive. If your religion doesn't make you feel good to be alive, what the hell is the point of it?
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Tom Robbins |
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b880fe1
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Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.
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comfort
taco
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Tom Robbins |
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6e97c12
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The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious. Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets. The beet is the melanch..
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Tom Robbins |
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1fef87f
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People are never perfect, but love can be.
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Tom Robbins |
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ad2a837
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To diminish the worth of women, men had to diminish the worth of the moon. They had to drive a wedge between human beings and the trees and the beasts and the waters, because trees and beasts and waters are as loyal to the moon as to the sun. They had to drive a wedge between thought and feeling...At first they used Apollo as the wedge, and the abstract logic of Apollo made a mighty wedge, indeed, but Apollo the artist maintained a love for..
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Tom Robbins |
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0c70c42
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To achieve the impossible, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.
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Tom Robbins |
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127b49c
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Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on them arrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco..
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Tom Robbins |
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12eec12
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This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sen..
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Tom Robbins |
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6d3b332
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This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sen..
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Tom Robbins |
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80eaa74
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Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.
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Tom Robbins |
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a49e75d
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If you lack the iron and the fuzz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. The dull and prosaic will be granted adventures that will dice their central nervous systems like an onion, romantic dreamers will end u..
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Tom Robbins |
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65fd893
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When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isn't love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstacy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the..
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Tom Robbins |
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362d4c9
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Now tequila may be the favored beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably has betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh dew of the doglands, essence of Aztec, crema de cacti; tequila, oily and thermal like the sun in solution; tequila, liquid geometry of passion; Tequila, the buzzard god who copulates in mid..
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drinks
tequila
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Tom Robbins |
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102bc2d
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Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.
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Tom Robbins |
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195edeb
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How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding - escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience - maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who're afraid to get their sh..
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Tom Robbins |
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ac45d02
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But do we know how to make love stay?' I can't even think about it. The best I can do is play it day by day.
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romance
reality
love
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Tom Robbins |
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c343489
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The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.
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Tom Robbins |
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4ee9150
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It doesn't matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you're not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren't connected, aren't working together harmoniously, well, you're just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you're walking, you may think you're running a damn marathon, but you're only on a hop trip. The connections gotta be maintained.
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Tom Robbins |
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f41aae8
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Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria is not knowing who one is and not caring. Ecstasy is knowing exactly who one is - and still not caring.
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Tom Robbins |
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d1a61c9
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I believe in everything; nothing is sacred. I believe in nothing; everything is sacred. Ha Ha Ho Ho Hee Hee.
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Tom Robbins |
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25aac50
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When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don't think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin' on himself and start payin' attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self..
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happiness
self-indulgence
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Tom Robbins |
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b63a09e
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You're better equipped for this world than I am," she said. "I'm always trying to change the world. You know how to live in it."
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Tom Robbins |
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463c708
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Are You Ready for New Urban Fragrances? Yeah, I guess I'm ready, but listen: Perfume is a disguise. Since the middle ages, we have worn masks of fruit and flowers in order to conceal from ourselves the meaty essence of our humanity. We appreciate the sexual attractant of the rose, the ripeness of the orange, more than we honor our own ripe carnality. Now today we want to perfume our cities, as well; to replace their stinging fumes of distur..
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humor
senses
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Tom Robbins |
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a692b51
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Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.
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Tom Robbins |
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732784e
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If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.
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values
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Tom Robbins |
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d90b4fd
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Suppose neutral angels were able to talk, Yahweh and Lucifer - God and Satan, to use their popular titles - into settling out of court. What would be the terms of the compromise? Specifically, how would they divide the assets of their early kingdom?
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satan
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Tom Robbins |