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e78778a
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If you lived in the same place long enough, everything reminded you of everything else.
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Jane Smiley |
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0dbe771
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When your parents don't like you, then you are free.
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Jane Smiley |
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be06267
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I had a burden lift off me that I hadn't even felt the heaviness of until then, and it was the burden of having to wait and see what was going to happen.
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Jane Smiley |
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66da172
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They throw themselves on the waters of the world, and they know they will be borne up.
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Jane Smiley |
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8878f87
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not to borrow trouble by worrying about it.
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Jane Smiley |
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aaa5d28
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He trusted only Devers, and why was that? Devers said, "We're going here," and they went there. Devers said, "Expect this and that," and this and that came to pass. But the rumor was that Ike didn't like Devers, and Frank figured this was the reason--Devers didn't have his head up his ass, and everyone else did."
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Jane Smiley |
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5d8fda4
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The novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness.
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Jane Smiley |
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e5b88bd
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The state fair was all very well, but it shouldn't be the last thing you saw in your life. At first you thought of people like Eloise and Frank and Lillian as runaways, and then, after a bit, you knew they were really scouts.
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Jane Smiley |
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79195bd
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said, looking for a job on Broadway.
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Jane Smiley |
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1049ed8
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I had been with my father so constantly for so long that I knew less and less about him with every passing year. Every meaningful image was jumbled together with the countless moments of our daily life defeating my efforts to gain some perspective.
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perspective
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Jane Smiley |
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23d91f9
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At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into the T intersection at Cabot Street Road.
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Jane Smiley |
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6397c55
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Do you think I would want to live under a government that you ran or set up? It's all very nice to say you're an anarchist, but you only want anarchy for yourself. For the rest of us, you want to make sure we do what you say, think how you think, and remember you're the boss.
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Jane Smiley |
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95b3c87
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After he got back to his apartment that evening, Arthur remembered how completely he'd thought he'd solved the problem of his own childhood once he'd claimed Lillian and enveloped her in his dream--no one idle, no one beset by solitude, everyone laughing. The problem he had not solved, or even known existed, was how quickly it passed, every joke, every embrace, every babyhood and childhood, every moment of thinking that he had things figure..
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Jane Smiley |
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4ad5e1f
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eidetic memory. What else any of it meant to
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Jane Smiley |
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77e611d
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rain or snow. Mama worried and Papa was impressed;
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Jane Smiley |
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c6e58aa
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What you saw was what you got, and she did not believe, as some of the other girls said, that the boys at the parties were separate from some sober incarnation of the same boys.
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Jane Smiley |
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0145546
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She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie.
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Jane Smiley |
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b4642ad
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I've experienced having you in the house. It's like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time, yelling over the telephone about things, laughing, making deals all the time. You take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise." She" --
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Jane Smiley |
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98a666a
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Seeing him somewhere was always a pleasure, like taking a drink of water.
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Jane Smiley |
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524578e
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I've experienced having you in the house. It's like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time, yelling over the telephone about things, laughing, making deals all the time. You take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise." She"
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Jane Smiley |
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46dcdd4
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There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret--it was a source of pride.
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Jane Smiley |
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edec371
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He had accepted that if you were a bookish person the events in your life took place in your head.
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Jane Smiley |
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7190246
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She could not imagine what she could do to reconstruct all the things she enjoyed, and she could hardly remember what it was that she had enjoyed.
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Jane Smiley |
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cd631a5
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Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man's table, or the child from a woman's breast, or the wife from a man's bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could hold these goods in place. And others remarked to themselves how sweet these goods were, in spite of that, and saw that pleasure lost in every moment is pleasure lost forever.
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happiness
lost
pleasure
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Jane Smiley |
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9601522
|
It was one of life's treats, wasn't it, paying a visit to your past, swinging like a ball on a string away from the person you loved, always knowing that the string must pull you back, and you would be oh so glad to get there.
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Jane Smiley |
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6556489
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Hmm, What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama's lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in the barn when the sunlight was shafting through the cracks in the boards, heating everything up.
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Jane Smiley |
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c3c34b5
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She didn't relate this memory to Janet, but she did think right then that all golden ages are discovered within. No one would ever know that her father, Carl, the endless Iowa horizon, a pan of shortbread emerging from the oven, and her grandchildren laughing in the next room had indeed made her life a golden age.
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Jane Smiley |
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c603f01
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Walter didn't know what to make of his two boys. If you looked at it a certain way, then the one who needed the beatings to toughen him up, namely Joey, never did a thing to earn a beating, because he hadn't the gumption, and the one who got the beatings learned nothing from them. Looking back on his own childhood, Walter saw a much more orderly system: His father or mother told them the rules. If they got out of line, even not intending to..
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Jane Smiley |
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a254e06
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He laughed with a kind of mirthless bark.
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Jane Smiley |
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0c030fd
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THE TWINS WERE eighteen months old now, walking (and standing and staring and screaming and sitting) just like other children more or less their age, and Andy found herself increasingly preoccupied with those baby scrapbooks her brother's wife had sent when they were born. Andy had gotten Janny's to the six-month mark--the last photo was of her sitting up in the baby bath with her fingers in her mouth. Richie's and Michael's--not even birth..
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Jane Smiley |
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c538732
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Do you think I would want to live under a government that you ran or set up? It's all very nice to say you're an anarchist, but you only want anarchy for yourself. For the rest of us, you want to make sure we do what you say, think how you think, and remember you're the boss. You ask me why you wear that jacket or give away that piece of crap on the street, even though you know that when people take it they just throw it in the next trash c..
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Jane Smiley |
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bff21d6
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hands behind his head. He took another deep breath. The whore
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Jane Smiley |
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e5864b5
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But now I saw with fresh conviction that is was us, all of us, who were failing, and the hallmark of our failure was the way we ate with our heads down, hungrily, quickly, because there was nothing else to do at the table
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family-drama
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Jane Smiley |
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da96124
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This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.
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truth
evil
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Jane Smiley |
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a700408
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redound to the university's professed goal of excellence
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Jane Smiley |
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10e905c
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dark, wet sides of the well dropped maybe
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Jane Smiley |
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fa3746e
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Two, she thought, was the most ephemeral age, the age of incipient consciousness, when personality was first chinking into place. Felicity was her last chance to enjoy this, and so she did, day after day
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Jane Smiley |
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430f7ac
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There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time.
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Jane Smiley |
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b3cfe96
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She had felt a surge of fear so strong
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Jane Smiley |
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03267ea
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In this flirtation he was conducting, he had had to rely entirely on his personality, never a good idea.
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Jane Smiley |
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eb97adf
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She always said, 'When I'm home, I've got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.' And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.
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cleaning
housework
relaxation
home
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Jane Smiley |
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471b315
|
The plays he had liked were the one called Measure for Measure, and another one called Macbeth. They were easy to follow, and what happened in them was kind of like what happened in junior high school.
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Jane Smiley |
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94e8581
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poking around in this dump, as it would be
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Jane Smiley |
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72bfc31
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She chewed the tender meat and sucked out the juices and felt the sauce coat her tongue and roll down her throat. After that, he looked still better. Another
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Jane Smiley |