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Pearls are congealed oyster spit.

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Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no ...more

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I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

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We ate the birds. We ate them. We wanted their songs to flow up through our throats and burst out of our mouths, and so we ate them. We wanted their f...more

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I remember my mean mouth, I remember how wise I thought I was. But I was not wise then. Now I am wise.

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I wonderif I should let my hair go greyso my advice will be better.

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We understand more than we know.

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He keeps his voice kindly but remote. A cross between a pedagogue, soothsayer, and a benevolent uncle – that should be his tone.

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I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she...more

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When you're young, you think everything you do is disposable. You move from now to now, crumpling time up in your hands, tossing it away. You're your ...more

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I was tired of her getting away with being so young.

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The Three of them were beautiful, in the way all girls of that age are beautiful. It can't be helped, that sort of beauty, nor can it be conserved; it...more

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How could I have been so ignorant? she thinks. So stupid, so unseeing, so given over to carelessness. But without such ignorance, such carelessness, h...more

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...He was wrong about the sadness though: far better to have it when you're young. A sad pretty girl inspires the urge to console, unlike a sad old cr...more

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We may call Eurydice forth from the world of the dead, but we cannot make her answer; and when we turn to look at her we glimpse her only for a moment...more