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1 " It seemed to me that boys had a lot more fun. It was a relief. I didn't look at myself from the outside. I just lived inside my skin, looking out. "
― Nancy Horan , Under the Wide and Starry Sky
2 " But the stories had made him different, too. They had shaped his appetite, his moral prejudices, who he was. "
3 " Writers should find out where joy resides and give it a voice. Every bright word or picture is a piece of pleasure set afloat. The reader catches it, and he goes on his way rejoicing. It's the business of art to send him that way as often as possible. "
4 " In the end, what really matters? Only kindness. Only making somebody a little happier for your presence. "
5 " Sooner or later, we all sit down to a banquet of consequences. "
6 " ...but when you have a gift, it isn't yours to keep to yourself. It's the reason you're here. It's your purpose. "
7 " Did all women married to well-known men struggle for recognition? "
8 " You simply have to move forward despite all the notions about how we are supposed to be. "
9 " My mother is my father’s wife. And the children of lovers are orphans. "
10 " Places like Edinburgh seemed staid and passé compared to, say, Chicago, where a man could capitalize upon his native talents in grand fashion, regardless of who his father was. In the scheme of things, it was hard not to feel some jealousy that America was on the ascent, and Europe was wallowing in decline, thanks to its own bad behavior. Judging "
11 " It was the sunny way he could tease her out of a snit, the way he looked at her so hungrily. "
12 " He loved his wife, though love seemed an inadequate word to contain all the emotion that passed between married people. "
13 " How could the human heart hold within its chambers at the same moment such grand measures of nobility and baseness? He wrote in his notebook: Indians at Omaha station: I am ashamed for this thing we call civilization. "
14 " Out of my country and myself I go. —ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON "
15 " to quicken with life. After an hour, covered "
16 " the idea of America, where emigrants could meld with others in the great classless pot called the United States. Did it work, really? "
17 " The Story of a Lie.” … "
18 " Fanny believed their emotional landscapes were similar: Both were tenderhearted, headstrong, tough and vulnerable all at once. "
19 " Maybe he knew that life is not an even fight,” Louis mused. “Given the odds, it’s the stand one takes that matters. "
20 " Your life doesn't belong to just you. "