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21 " How did people protect themselves? How did anyone keep this world from ruining them? "
― , Nothing to See Here
22 " I thought it over. Dollywood. “Islands in the Stream.” That body. She was the best thing that had ever come out of Tennessee. Jesus Christ, it wasn’t even close. Bessie had got it on the first try "
23 " I knew that if I asked, a hairbrush would appear, a toothbrush and four different kinds of toothpaste, but I tried to pretend I was self-sufficient. A lot of times when I think I'm being self-sufficient, I'm really just learning to live without the things that I need. "
24 " You know, at Vanderbilt, there was a kind of boy who wore pastel shorts and boat shoes. They wore seersucker, like they were racist lawyers from the forties. I hated them. They seemed like children but they already looked like middle-aged men. I called them Mint Julep Boys, like they missed the Old South because, even if there was horrible racism, it was worth it if it meant that they could be important by default. "
25 " Maybe that’s what children were, a desperate need that opened you up even if you didn’t want it. "
26 " If you were rich, and you were a dude, it really felt like if you just followed a certain number of steps, you could do pretty much whatever you wanted. "
27 " From that point on, I guess I sort of realized that my imagination, which made life tolerable, needed to be kept a secret from the rest of the world. "
28 " We are so happy to have you here,” he said; he didn’t blink. I didn’t know if this was something necessary for a politician, if blinking was a sign of weakness or something. As a result, I began blinking so much that I almost started crying. "
29 " Maybe raising children was just giving them the things you loved most in the world and hoping that they loved them, too. "
30 " My mom had once told me that being a mother was made up of “regret and then forgetting about that regret sometimes. "
31 " I started to care less about the future. I cared more about making the present tolerable. And time passed. And that was my life. "