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This is a wonderful joke to play upon a prisoner, to promise forgiveness.

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Like most hearts, it was complicated, shaded with dark and dappled with light.

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No one cared what she wanted. No one had ever cared. And perhaps, worst of all, no one ever would care.

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Despereaux was reading the story out loud to himself. He was reading from the beginning so that he could get to the end...

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Once upon a time," he said out loud to the darkness. He said these words because they were the best, the most powerful words that he knew and just the...more

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the story is not a pretty one. there is violence in it. And cruelty. But stories that are not pretty have a certain value, too, I suppose. Everything,...more