1988 8 6
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no one else comes in my back door but you
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1987 6 5
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We didn't wear shoes in the summer, except for Sunday school and church. The soles of our feet were black and tough as shoe leather.
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1987 25 5
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" Not a day goes by/ that isn't stabbed with common sorrow"--Maurice Manning Crazy's alright by me if it's a harmless plea for some little sanity, or unavoidable by birth but it just won't do for tricks. Like say I go over there right…
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1987 5 8
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Mama hung them everywhere. It started with just a few, in our apartment and outside on the brick. She made walls into windows.
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1987 6 0
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“Actually, children, none of us will be having birthdays this year,” my father sighed.
“Not even me? Why?” asked Charlie.
"Son, this is what's known as a ‘one-party democracy."
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1987 8 2
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My dad drove a Model A Roadster
and had a photo taken of him on a hunting trip up in Wisconsin
with one leather boot up on the running board
and a .22 caliber pistol in his hand
like Ernest Hemingway and Clark Gable rolled into one
My dad ro
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1987 2 1
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After he’d told her on Friday that No, he wasn’t going to sign that contract for the cemetery plots she’d picked out—“I don’t want to spend my whole life knowing exactly where I’ll end up” is exactly what he’d said—the marriage, as far as she was concerne
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1986 19 15
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Our sons do nothing but drink and roar
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1986 9 4
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America has given birth to many great poets--Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Muhammad Ali--but why should talented people have all the fun?
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1986 1 1
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May as well have lived two lives, he thinks: one before memory and one after. And how can you remember someone else's life? You can't. After forty years of living, he realizes that there's no way of knowing what his own eyes have witnessed.
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1986 20 10
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1986 0 0
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SO ABOUT TEN minutes later Heidi arrived at the house with her boyfriend in tow, looking as if she had stepped out of an MTV music video, her black leather jacket loaded with sequins and silver studs, her blonde hair now colored green, all frizzy and unke
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1986 8 4
|
He ate husks of bone and old paper scraps with yesterday's headlines, blowing down the street like tumbleweeds now at four o'clock in the morning.He wrapped himself in an old army coat against the November winds as he tramped back and forth, back and forth, up the ten…
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1985 9 8
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my father has a phobia of dentists./ he also once felt/ that if the house ran out of toilet paper/ he would lose his job.
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1985 0 0
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Soft voices in private, in the street,
city noise violence disappears
she blinks her eyelids
and I can hear the lashes
intertwine and pull clear.
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1985 24 16
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I stared out the window, the fog creeped up the Avenues like a spectator.
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1985 3 2
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'Yer a cool, cool glass of water baby....'
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1984 10 8
|
a mid-life crisis in 55 words
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1984 20 11
|
...he thought often of the rollicking waves, of being pulled under, of being weightless and senseless...
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1983 9 9
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I'm not interested in her that way.
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1983 0 0
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They got out wearing their crisp brown Army jackets and khaki pants; she saw the cross on the lapel of the officer's shirt and just knew. These men brought sad news from faraway places.
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1983 10 11
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the brand we like best and buy whether it's on sale or not. Surely there is another blue cheese dressing that is sold, possibly in San Francisco and made in a Berkeley basement by hippies who scrape together all of their change twice a year and buy cheese from an ancient…
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1983 5 5
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It seems the people of this house were a happy family – The smiling faces, the children’s enthusiasm tells me as much. I wonder what happened to them.
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1983 2 1
|
A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?”
“Do I know you?”
“It's Bill.”
The side of his little brother's thin face
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1983 6 2
|
her heart just nodded knowingly
....yes, dear
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1983 6 3
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"Hattie? What are you doing?" Bosley asked, the quaver in his voice an indication of an impending erection.
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1983 3 3
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I also understand if you don't think that's fair. But consider this: If she doesn't operate according to those rules, then where are we? Isn't that anarchy?
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1983 12 7
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I am a romantic writer, true. But what comes after the romance is what fascinates me. A lover dying is the most beautiful scene I want to write. The most beautiful scene I have yet to write.
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1982 5 2
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this one was abandoned... a splinter left under the skin, pushed out by protective flesh
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1982 21 14
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all paths converge on Africa/
and Eden, and the fall from animal grace
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