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101 " Maybe she was really good at improv. I couldn't be certain she was nineteen or that her name really was Nora Halliday. Maybe she was like one of those sweaters with an innocent little thread hanging off of it: One pull, the whole thing unraveled. "
― Marisha Pessl , Night Film
102 " Everyone associated with the slow printed word is fast becoming the Great Crested Newt of the culture. First it was the poets, the playwrights, then the novelists. Veteran newspapermen are next "
103 " Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money. "
104 " Because I saw, suddenly, how it would always be for me, Sam's life unfolding like slides in an old projector I'd always be clicking through in the dark, stunning leaps forward in time--but never the uncut reel. "
105 " It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They'd probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you. "
106 " that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. That’s when all the real things were said. "
107 " I took a step inside to get a better look and realized the man was actually Christ, the way he appeared in Sunday-school classrooms: milky complexion, starched blue dressing gown, a beard trimmed as painstakingly as a bonsai tree. He was doing what he was always doing: cupping blinding light in his hands like he was trying to warm up after a long day of downhill skiing. "
108 " I miss him every single day," he said. "I hate how the people who really get you are the ones you can never hold on to for very long. And the ones who don't understand you at all stick around. "
109 " Only the greatest of personal demons can force you to do powerful work. "
110 " Life had been a suit I’d only put on for special occasions. Most of the time I kept it in the back of my closet, forgetting it was there. We were meant to die when it was barely stitched anymore, when the elbows and knees were stained with grass and mud, shoulder pads uneven from people hugging you all the time, downpours and blistering sun, the fabric faded, buttons gone. "
111 " It appeared in the Internet age, pianos, like physical books, were fast becoming culturally extinct. They’d probably stay that way unless Apple invented the iPiano, which fit inside your pocket and could be mastered via text message. With the iPiano, anyone can be an iMozart. Then, you could compose your own iRequiem for your own iFuneral attended by millions of your iFriends who iLoved you. "
112 " God, the boring relative everyone ignores—no one calls, no one writes—until they need a serious favor. "
113 " It's a terrible thing, to lie. It's a field you keep seeding and watering and plowing, but nothing will ever grow on it. "
114 " Most of the kids had been so mentally screwed up by their parents they needed more than twelve weeks of wilderness. They needed reincarnation. To die and just come back as a grasshopper, as a fucking weed. That'd be preferable to the agony they were in just by being alive. "
115 " People don't realize how easy life is to change. You just get on the bus. "
116 " You are a magnificent and powerful person,” I said. "
117 " I know Long Island like I know my kitchen. I understand it’s there for my pleasure and enjoyment, but somehow I never manage to go there. "
118 " There was an unspoken understanding that when a reporter chased a story, hunches and theories became airborne and other reporters could catch them like a cold. "
119 " But that was how it went sometimes, the English language, when you really needed it, crumbled to clay in your mouth. "
120 " There it is," he'd say reverentially. "The box represents the mysterious threshold between reality and make believe. "