I have a great deal of religious symbolism in my stories because I have a very deep sense of religion and also I have religious training. And I suppose you don't say, I'm going to have the flowering judas tree stand for betrayal, but of course it does.
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But what Kezia liked more than anything, what she liked frightfully, was the lamp. It stood in the middle of the dining-room table, an exquisite little amber lamp with a white globe. It was filled all ready for lighting, though, of course, you couldn't light it. But there was something inside that looked like oil and moved when you shook it. The father and mother dolls, who sprawled very stiff as though they had fainted in the drawing-room, and their two little children asleep upstairs, were really too big for the doll's house. They didn't look as though they belonged. But the lamp was perfect. It seemed to smile at Kezia, to say, 'I live here.' The lamp was real.
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I love the rain. I want the feeling of it on my face.
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It's a terrible thing to be alone -- yes it is -- it is -- but don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath --as terrible as you like --but a mask.
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I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
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Love without marriage can sometimes be very awkward for all concerned; but marriage without love simply removes that institution from the terr...
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Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy you can't build on it it's only for wallowing in.
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By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.
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I don't believe in intuition. When you get sudden flashes of perception, it is just the brain working faster than usual. But you've been getting ready to know it for a long time, and when it comes, you feel you've known it always.
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Make it a rule in life never to regret and never look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it is good only for wallowing in.
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I am treating you as my friend asking you share my present minuses in the hope I can ask you to share my future pluses.
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The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.
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Our being is subject to all the chances of life. There are so many things we are capable of, that we could be or do. The potentialities are so great that we never, any of us, are more than one-fourth fulfilled.
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Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
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A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it's a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself -- or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind. You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.
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Defeat in this world is no disgrace if you fought well and fought for the right thing.
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I want to be all that I am capable of becoming.
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When we can begin to take our failures seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
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Would you not like to try all sorts of lives -- one is so very small -- but that is the satisfaction of writing -- one can impersonate so many people.
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You can't write about people out of textbooks, and you can't use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
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To work -- to work! It is such infinite delight to know that we still have the best things to do.
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Risk Risk anything Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
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I am treating you as my friend, asking you to share my present minuses in the hope that I can ask you to share my future pluses.
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In the next year or so, my signature will appear on 60 billion of United States currency. More important to me, however, is the signature that appears on my life-the strong, proud, assertive handwriting of a loving father and mother.
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Thus, in a real sense, I am constantly writing autobiography, but I have to turn it into fiction in order to give it credibility.
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All of us can think of a book... that we hope none of our children have taken off the shelf. But if I have the right to remove that book from the shelf -that work I abhor- then you also have exactly the same right and so does everyone else. And then we have no books left on the shelf for any of us.
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Make a customer, not a sale.
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I don't even butter my bread. I consider that cooking.
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Spring makes everything look filthy.
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Reason, progress, unselfishness, a wide historical perspective, expansiveness, generosity, enlightened self-interest. I had heard it all my life, and it filled me with despair.
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