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You're sad because you're sad.It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.Go see a shrink or take a pill,or hug your sadness like an eyeless dollyou nee...more

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He said, I won't have one of those things in the house. It gives a young girl a false notion of beauty, not to mention anatomy. If a real woman was bu...more

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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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My parents are like younger, urchinlike brothers and sisters whose faces are dirty and who blurt out humiliating things that can neither be anticipate...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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A writer's age at the time of a work's composition is never irrelevant.

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Like preachers, I sell vision,like perfume ads, desireor its facsimile. Like jokesor war, it’s all in the timing.I sell men back their worse suspicion...more

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It's psychic. It's the age. It's chemical.

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The Loneliness of the Military HistorianConfess: it's my professionthat alarms you.This is why few people ask me to dinner,though Lord knows I don't g...more

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From her handbag she takes a round gilt compact with violets on the cover. She opens it, unclosing her other self, and runs her fingertip around the c...more

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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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Happiness is a garden walled with glass: there's no way in or out. In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It's loss and regr...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