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If the human condition were the periodic table, maybe love would be hydrogen at No. 1. Death would be helium at No. 2. Power, I reckon, would be where...more

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Strip back the beliefs pasted on by governesses, schools, and states, you find indelible truths at one's core.

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I’d always worried but kissing’s not so tricky. Your lips know what to do, just like sea anenomes know what to do. Kissing spins you, like Flying Tea-...more

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Teachers're always using that "in your own words." I hate that. Authors knit their sentences tight. It's their job. Why make us unpick them, just to p...more

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Perfume counters in department stores, Holly Deblin smells of, the middle of July, and cinnamon Tic Tacs.

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Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ’cause the things themselves were part of what was there.

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Will I be some kid’s dad one day? Are any future people lurking deep inside mine?...Which girl’s carrying the other half of my kid, deep in those intr...more

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Finished in a frenzy that reminded me of our last night in Cambridge. Watched my final sunrise. Enjoyed a last cigarette. Didn’t think the view could ...more

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A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.

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Hey, metaphysics seminar is on the roof. Just take the elevator up and keep walking until you hit the sidewalk. Anything is true if enough people beli...more

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Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.

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There are different ways people make this place. Sweat, exercise and pain is one way. You can see them in the gyms, in the well-ordered swimming pools...more

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This, explained the angel, is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.

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Neither of us had anything to say, or rather we had everything to say, but after all those nights of not saying a word, we suddenly found we had not o...more

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Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.