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1 " All you need do, Bernie,”she gulped her toast soaked in coffee, “is present the truth as fiction. "
― James Purdy , Cabot Wright Begins
2 " But failure has kept Curt at home like a nice warm dachshund. "
3 " The last human of importance the American people have been able to keep in the working end of their brain is your own Chicago triggerman, Dillinger. After him they kind of lost hold on keeping who’s who straight. So don’t be surprised if they don’t remember who Cabot Wright is, or if they do. "
4 " If the book’s bad enough, they’ll publish it, and if it’s bad bad enough, the daily reviewers will love it, and it’ll sell. "
5 " And yet Curt’s a real writer too. His machinery is stuck, that’s all. "
6 " Curt, my husband, is a writer, and he’ll never write again. That’s our funeral, as they say down south. Now in your case, my pet, you’re married to a phenomenon of our own special epoch, a man who couldn’t in a thousand years be a writer in the only meaning of the term, but who can and probably will write a book. "
7 " He’s America in action — opposed to quality. "
8 " She was a church open only for him, with services in full operation twenty-four hours a day. "
9 " If you get lonesome enough, Carrie knew, you’ll even call the police. "
10 " Most books don’t even come into the world with the noise of the still-born. "
11 " Great books, if long enough and full of topical description and contemporary comment, were now coming into even wider public favor. The lengthier and fuller of comment, the better. "
12 " The to-dos were sordid rather than exciting, perhaps because nearly everybody was approaching middle age. "
13 " Why should you expect everything to work out successful? You’re old enough to know better. "
