"If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness."
-Jane Smiley
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"Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.“
-Jane Smiley
posted in death
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"I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty."
-Jane Smiley
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"The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others."
-Jane Smiley
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"Respect and fear are two different things."
-Jane Smiley
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"In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion."
-Jane Smiley
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"In December 1998, I considered myself an expert on love. I was almost a year into a relationship, one that had grown more slowly than I had wished, but once it flowered it was much more stimulating than any marriage or relationship I had known."
-Jane Smiley
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"When we are dealing with death we are constantly being dragged down by the event: Humor diverts our attention and lifts our sagging spirits."
-Allen Klein
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"I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet."
-David Ortiz
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"What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy."
-Mario Puzo
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"So here is one of my theories on happiness: we cannot know if we have lived a truly happy life until the very end. This view of life and death was reinforced by my close witnessing of the buildup to the death of Philip Gould. Philip was without doubt my closest friend in politics. When he died, I felt like I had lost a limb."
-Alastair Campbell
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"I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted."
-Fiona Shaw
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"Planning to play: that's what saving for retirement is today - and it is antithetical to the nature of play, fully within the definition of work, and blissfully ignorant of the reality of death."
-John Thorn
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