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People read books to escape the uncertainties of life.

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People love to read about sins and errors, but not their own.

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It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

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What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

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What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness.

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The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows

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The tunnel of winter had settled over our lives, ushered in by that great official Hoodwink, the end of daylight saving time. Personally I would vote ...more

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Mistakes wreck your life. But they make what you have. It's kind of all one. You know what Hester told me when we were working the sheep one time? She...more

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In my own worst seasons I've come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing...more

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I do understand that they fall when I'm least able to pay attention because poems fall not from a tree, really, but from the richly pollinated boughs ...more

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It's the same struggle for each of us, and the same path out: the utterly simple, infinitely wise ultimately defiant act of loving one thing and then ...more

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Listen: being dead is not worse than being alive. It is different though. You could say the view is larger.

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Every life is different because you passed this way and touched history.

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Don’t try to make life a mathematics problem with yourself in the center and everything coming out equal. When you’re good, bad things can still happe...more

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To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know.