1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.
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I pity the Jews trying to get through life with only half a Bible. That's like trying to get from here to San Francisco with a road map that stops at Dubuque, Iowa.
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High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.
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How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
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People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say.
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People have to talk about something just to keep their good voice boxes in working order, so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say
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Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
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Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way.
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Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.
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It strikes me as gruesome and comical that in our culture we have an expectation that man can always solve his problems. This is so untrue that it makes me want to cry--or laugh.
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Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way
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About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything
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Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
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I am eternally grateful.. for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.
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Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.
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A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.
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All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental, and should not be construed.
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Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae
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During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.
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The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody else could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were.
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History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again
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Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.
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I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.
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I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the centre.
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We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.
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How embarrassing to be human.
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Be careful what you pretend to be because you are what you pretend to be.
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Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion... I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
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