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Here Is The Trap You Are In.... And It's Not My Trap—i Haven't Trapped You. Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You—because You Know How To Perform Them—have No Choice, Either. What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too. If Abortion Was Legal, A Woman Would Have A Choice—and So Would You. You Could Feel Free Not To Do It Because Someone Else Would. But The Way It Is, You're Trapped. Women Are Trapped. Women Are Victims, And So Are You.

-John Irving

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Here Is The Trap

John Irving

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Here Is The Trap You Are In.... And It's Not My Trap—i Haven't Trapped You. Because Abortions Are Illegal, Women Who Need And Want Them Have No Choice In The Matter, And You—because You Know How To Perform Them—have No Choice, Either. What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too. If Abortion Was Legal, A Woman Would Have A Choice—and So Would You. You Could Feel Free Not To Do It Because Someone Else Would. But The Way It Is, You're Trapped. Women Are Trapped. Women Are Victims, And So Are You.

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My Brain Is Sending Poison To My Heart.

So, I Don't Work In Terms Of Real Time. I Don't Work In A Timely Fashion.

Owen Meany Who Rarely Wasted Words And Who Had The Conversation-stopping Habit Of Dropping Remarks Like Coins Into A Deep Pool Of Water... Remarks That Sank, Like Truth, To The Bottom Of The Pool Where They Would Remain Untouchable.

When However Small A Measure Of Jealousy Is Mixed With Misunderstanding, There Is Always Going To Be Trouble.

Misunderstanding

O God — Please Give Him Back! I Shall Keep Asking You.

There's Nothing As Scary As The Future.

Nothing Moves At The Hotel New Hampshire! We're Screwed Down Here-for Life!

You Know, People Think You Have To Be Dumb To Skip Rope For 45 Minutes. No, You Have To Be Able To Imagine Something Else. While You're Skipping Rope, You Have To Be Able To See Something Else.

Garp Drank The Beer And Wondered If Everything Was An Anticlimax.

Writing Is Hard. I Learned How To Work Hard From Wrestling, Not English Courses.

It Doesn't Really Matter Who Said It - It's So Obviously True. Before You Can Write Anything, You Have To Notice Something.

We Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It - And Reward It In All Manner Of Ways.

There Is No Straightforward Negotiation With A Four Year Old.

. . .there Are Moments When Time Does Stop. We Must Be Alert Enough To Notice Such Moments . . .

If You Feel Strongly About People Having Abortions, Don't Have One.

…there Was No More Safety To Be Found In Love Than There Was To Be Found In A Virus.

It Is Amazing To Me, Now, How Such Wild Imaginings And Philosophies - Inspired By A Night Charged With Frights And Calamities - Made Such Perfectly Good Sense To Owen Meany And Me, But Good Friends Are Nothing To Each Other If They Are Not Supportive.

And I Find - I'm 63, And My Capacity To Be By Myself And Just Spend Time By Myself Hasn't Diminished Any. That's The Necessary Part Of Being A Writer, You Better Like Being Alone.

Like Being Alone

Lilly Was Not Crazy. She Left A Serious Suicide Note. 'sorry,' Said The Note. 'just Not Big Enough.

I Never Know When I Finish The Novel I Am Writing Which Will Be The Next Novel Out Of The Station.

They Were Involved In That Awkward Procedure Of Getting To Unknow Each Other.

Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.

I'm Old-fashioned, A Storyteller. I'm Not An Analyst And I'm Not An Intellectual.

Most Places We Leave In Childhood Grow Less, Not More, Fancy.

Imagining Something Is Better Than Remembering Something.

I Want To Go On Being A Student," I Told Him. "i Want To Be A Teacher. I'm Just A Reader," I Said. "don't Sound So Ashamed," He Said. "reading Is A Gift." "i Learned It From You," I Told Him. "it Doesn't Matter Where You Learned It- It's A Gift. If You Care About Something, You Have To Protect It. If You're Lucky Enough To Find A Way Of Life You Love, You Have To Find The Courage To Live It.

Anyone Can Be Sentimental About The Nativity; Any Fool Can Feel Like A Christian At Christmas. But Easter Is The Main Event; If You Don’t Believe In The Resurrection, You’re Not A Believer." “if You Don’t Believe In Easter,” Owen Meany Said. “don’t Kid Yourself—don’t Call Yourself A Christian.

It Is Exhausting To Be Seventeen And Not Know Who You Are.

As It Was, Things Went From Bad To Worse, As They Often Will When Amateurs Are Involved In An Activity That They Perform In Bad Temper – Or In A Hurry.

I'm A Very Old-fashioned Novelist. I Write 19th-century Novels, Where A Lot Of Rules Apply.

My Life Is A Reading List.

It's My Experience That Very Few Writers, Young Or Old, Are Really Seeking Advice When They Give Out Their Work To Be Read. They Want Support; They Want Someone To Say, "good Job."

When People Say That German Or Any Other Language Is Romantic... All They Really Mean Is That They've Enjoyed A Past In The Language

Safer Than We Are.” I Told Franny. “safer Than Love.” “let Me Tell Ya Kid,” Franny Said To Me, Squeezing My Hand. “everything’s Safer Than Love.

Children Are Most Impressed With The Importance Of A Moment When They Witness A Parent Breaking The Parents' Own Rule.

It´s Natural To Want Someone You Love To Do What You Want, Or What You Think Would Be Good For Them, But You Have To Let Everything Happen To Them. You Can't Interfere With People You Love Any More Than You're Supposed To Interfere With People You Don't Even Know. And That's Hard, ..., Because You Often Feel Like Interfering -you Want To Be The One Who Makes The Plans.

Wherever The Tv Glows, There Sits Someone Who Isn't Reading.

Whatever I Write, No Matter How Gray Or Dark The Subject Matter, It's Still Going To Be A Comic Novel.

Among Adults – And Among Orphans – Wilbur Larch Noted That Delirious Happiness Was Rare.

When Someone You Love Dies, And You're Not Expecting It, You Don't Lose Her All At Once; You Lose Her In Pieces Over A Long Time—the Way The Mail Stops Coming, And Her Scent Fades From The Pillows And Even From The Clothes In Her Closet And Drawers. Gradually, You Accumulate The Parts Of Her That Are Gone. Just When The Day Comes—when There's A Particular Missing Part That Overwhelms You With The Feeling That She's Gone, Forever—there Comes Another Day, And Another Specifically Missing Part.

I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position. But When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion. The Catholic Church May Espouse Its Opinion On Abortion To The Members Of Its Congregation. But They Are In Violation Of Separation Of Church And State When They Try To Proselytize Their Abortion Politics On People Who Are Not Catholics.

Nearly Everything Seems A Letdown After A Writer Has Finished Writing Something.

This Is What Self-centered Religion Does To Us: It Allows Us To Use It To Further Our Own Ends.

When I Finally Write The First Sentence, I Want To Know Everything That Happens, So That I Am Not Inventing The Story As I Write It - Rather, I Am Remembering A Story That Has Already Happened.

And Father Said, “there Are No Happy Endings.” “right!” Cried Iowa Bob – An Odd Mixture Of Exuberance And Stoicism In His Cracked Voice. “death Is Horrible, Final, And Frequently Premature,” Coach Bob Declared. “so What?” My Father Said. “right!” Cried Iowa Bob. “that’s The Point: So What?” Thus The Family Maxim Was That An Unhappy Ending Did Not Undermine A Rich And Energetic Life. This Was Based On The Belief That There Were No Happy Endings.

It's Because Even A Good Man Can't Always Be Right, That We Need ... Rules.

Sell My Old Clothes - I'm Off To Heaven

If I Have Any Advantage, Maybe, As A Writer, It Is That I Don't Think I'm Very Interesting. I Mean, Beginning A Novel With The Last Sentence Is A Pretty Plodding Way To Spend Your Life.

You Can't Learn Everything You Need To Know Legally.

I'm Not At All Contemporary, Not Even Modern, And The Fact That I Would Be So Quaintly Attracted To That Wrestling Rule Makes Me, I Suppose, Seem All The More Old-fashioned. I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.

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He Had Heard Her Say, So Many Times, That A Society That Approved Of Making Abortion Illegal Was A Society That Approved Of Violence Against Women; That Making Abortion Illegal Was Simply A Sanctimonious, Self-righteous Form Of Violence Against Women- It Was Just Another Way Of Legalizing Violence Against Women, Nurse Caroline Would Say.

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I Certainly Think Obama Is The Most Hopeful President I've Seen In The Country Since John Kennedy.

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Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.

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I Feel More A Part Of The Wrestling Community Than I Feel I Belong To The Community Of Arts And Letters. Why? Because Wrestling Requires Even More Dedication Than Writing Because Wrestling Represents The Most Difficult And Rewarding Objective That I Have Ever Dedicated Myself To; Because Wrestling And Wrestling Coaches Are Among The Most Disciplined And Self-sacrificing People I Have Ever Known.

We Don't Always Have A Choice How We Get To Know One Another. Sometimes, People Fall Into Our Lives Cleanly--as If Out Of The Sky, Or As If There Were A Direct Flight From Heaven To Earth--the Same Sudden Way We Lose People, Who Once Seemed They Would Always Be Part Of Our Lives

In Increments Both Measurable And Not, Our Childhood Is Stolen From Us -- Not Always In One Momentous Event But Often In A Series Of Small Robberies, Which Add Up To The Same Loss.

A Personal Injustice Is Stronger Motivation Than Any Instinct For Philanthropy.

Being Wrong About Important Things Is Exhausting.

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A Part Of Adolescence Is Feelimg That There's No One Else Around Who's Enough Like Youself To Understand You.

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Being Reviewed Is Being Condescended To By Your Inferiors.

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He Was One Of Those People Things Came Easily To, But He Did Little To Demonstrate That He Deserved To Be Gifted.

Is It A Democratic Society That Condemns People To The Accident Of Conception? What Are We-monkeys? If You Expect People To Be Responsible For Their Children, You Have To Give Them The Right To Choose Whether Or Not To Have Children. What Are You People Thinking Of? You're Not Only Crazy! You're Ogres!

Thinking Of You

I Don't Begin A Novel Or A Screenplay Until I Know The Ending. And I Don't Mean Only That I Have To Know What Happens. I Mean That I Have To Hear The Actual Sentences. I Have To Know What Atmosphere The Words Convey.

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You Don't Have To Be In The Habit Of Going To Church To Listen To Such A Literary Minister; You Don't Have To Be A Believer To Be Moved By Mr. Buechner's Faith.

To Each Other, We Were As Normal And Nice As The Smell Of Bread. We Were Just A Family. In A Family Even Exaggerations Make Perfect Sense.

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You Take Every Opportunity Given You In This World, Even If You Have Too Many Opportunities. One Day, The Opportunities Stop, You Know.

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I Think Now That Is The Nature Of Hymns-they Make Us Want To Repeat Them...they Are A Part Of Any Service, And Often The Only Part Of A Funeral Service, That Makes Us Feel Everything Is Acceptable.

There Are Few Things As Seemingly Untouched By The Real World As A Child Asleep.

People Are Either Attracted To The Unseemly Or Disapproving Of It, Or Both; Yet We Try To Sound Superior To The Unseemly By Pretending To Be Amused By It Or Indifferent To It.

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A Novel Is A Piece Of Architecture. It's Not Random Wallowings Or Confessional Diaries. It's A Building-it Has To Have Walls And Floors And The Bathrooms Have To Work.

The Object Of War Is To Survive It.

We Are Formed By What We Desire

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When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion.

Freedom Of Religion

My Old Coach Used To Say That If You Were In It For The Match, If You Were In It For The Trophies, You Were In It For The Wrong Reasons.

Whereas She Wished More Of The Population Were Better Educated, She Also Believed That Education Was Largely Wasted On The Majority Of The People She Met.

Everyone Has A Right To Be A Little Happy, Asshole.

If You Asked Me One Day, I Might Say, "well, Sometimes I Feel A Little Bit Religious." If You Asked Me Another Day, I'd Just Say Flat Out, "no."

It's Not Right To Hurt Or Deceive Someone Who's Already Been Hurt And Deceived.

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You Let Me Drown!” Owen Said. “you Didn’t Do Anything! You Just Watched Me Drown! I’m Already Dead!” He Told Us. “remember That: You Let Me Die.

Goodnight You Princes Of Maine, You Kings Of New England.

Gender Mattered A Whole Lot Less To Shakespeare Than It Seems To Matter To Us.

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Plot Is A Map And I Begin With It. It Is What Made Me Admire The Novels Of The 19th Century; That The Stories Are Foreshadowed. TheyÕre Going Someplace.

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A Truly Happy Woman Drives Some Men And Almost Every Other Woman Absolutely Crazy

Human Beings Are Remarkable - At What We Can Learn To Live With. If We Couldn't Get Strong From What We Lose, And What We Miss, And What We Want And Can't Have, Then We Couldn't Ever Get Strong Enough, Could We? What Else Makes Us Strong?

When I Feel Like Being A Director, I Write A Novel.

Writing A Novel Is Actually Searching For Victims. As I Write I Keep Looking For Casualties. The Stories Uncover The Casualties.

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I Do Know Where I'm Going And It's Just A Matter Of Finding The Language To Get There.

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All I Say Is: Let Us Leave Les Folles Alone; Let's Just Leave Them Be. Don't Judge Them. You Are Not Superior To Them - Don't Put Them Down.

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Here In St. Cloud’s,” Dr. Larch Wrote, “ I Have Been Given The Choice Of Playing God Or Leaving Practically Everything Up To Chance. It Is My Experience That Practically Everything Is Left Up To Chance Much Of The Time; Men Who Believe In Good And Evil, And Who Believe That Good Should Win, Should Watch For Those Moments When It Is Possible To Play God – We Should Seize Those Moments. There Won’t Be May

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I'm A Worst-case Scenario Person. I'm Only Interested In A Story Because I Kind Of Go, Like A Magnet, To The Worst Thing That Can Happen.

Worst Case Scenario

The Former Stewardess Glared At Her Ex-pilot Husband As If He Had Been Speaking, And Thinking, In The Absence Of Sufficient Oxygen.

We Invent What We Love And What We Fear.

You Bet I Write Disaster Fiction. We Have Compiled A Disastrous Record On This Planet, A Record Of Stupidity And Absurdity And Self-abuse And Self-aggrandizement And Self-deception And Pompousness And Self-righteousness And Cruelty And Indifference Beyond What Any Other Species Has Demonstrated The Capacity For, Which Is The Capacity For All The Above.

My Dear Boy, Please Don’t Put A Label On Me—don’t Make Me A Category Before You Get To Know Me!

Don't Forget This, Too: Rumors Aren't Interested In The Unsensational Story; Rumors Don't Care What's True.

If You Feel So Strongly About What's On Television, Don't Have One.

Know The Story Before You Fall In Love With Your First Sentence. If You Don’t Know The Story Before You Begin The Story, What Kind Of A Storyteller Are You? Just An Ordinary Kind, Just A Mediocre Kind – Making It Up As You Go Along, Like A Common Liar.

Falling In Love

So We Dream On. Thus We Invent Our Lives. We Give Ourselves A Sainted Mother, We Make Our Father A Hero; And Someone’s Older Brother And Someone’s Older Sister – They Become Our Heroes Too. We Invent What We Love And What We Fear. There Is Always A Brave Lost Brother – And A Little Lost Sister, Too. We Dream On And On: The Best Hotel, The Perfect Family, The Resort Life. And Our Dreams Escape Us Almost As Vividly As We Can Imagine Them.

I've Always Been Interested In Miracles, Or The Miraculous Of The Unexplained. I Don't Scoff At What Makes People Believe Or Want To Believe. I Think I Understand The Tremendous Attraction Of The Mysteries Of The Church To The Same Degree That I Understand And Appreciate The Frustration People Feel, Especially Believers, With The Human Rule-making Arm Of The Church, With The Not-miraculous Part Of The Church - Any Church.

You Think You Have A Memory; But It Has You!

I Have Always Believed That, In A Story, If Something Traumatic Or Calamitous Enough Happens To A Kid At A Formative Age, That Will Make Him Or Her The Adult They Become.

There Was No Manifestation Of Contemporary Culture That Did Not Indicate To My Grandmother How Steadfast Was The Nation's Decline, How Merciless Our Mental And Moral Deterioration, How Swiftly All-embracing Our Final Decadence. I Never Saw Her Read A Book Again; But She Referred To Books Often - As If They Were Shrines And Cathedrals Of Learning That Television Had Plundered And Then Abandoned.

She Was An Expert At The Art Of Sudden Appearance.

If You Don't Feel That You Are Possibly On The Edge Of Humiliating Yourself, Of Losing Control Of The Whole Thing, Then Probably What You Are Doing Isn't Very Vital.

Keep Passing The Open Windows.

It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.

You Can't Say You're Going To Ban Something In The Name Of Good Taste, Because Then You Have Directed Someone To Play The Role Of Good-taste Police. We - Americans - Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It.

Just When You Begin Thinking Of Yourself As Memorable, You Run Into Someone Who Can't Even Remember Having Met You

I Have A Very Poor Record At Multiple Choice Questions.

Multiple Choice

I'm Not Proselytizing My Method. I Don't Believe That One Writer Should Tell Other Writers How To Write.

I Had Been A Student In Vienna, And One Of The Neat Little Things I Had Found Out Was About That Zoo. It Was A Good Debut Novel For Me To Have Published. I Was 26 Or 27 When It Was Published. I Already Had A Kid And Would Soon Have A Second.

I Think That Was When The Headmaster Realized He Had Lost; He Realized Then That He Was Finished. Because, What Could He Do? Was He Going To Tell Us To Stop Praying? We Kept Our Heads Bowed; And We Kept Praying. Even As Awkward As He Was, The Rev. Mr. Merrill Had Made It Clear To Us That There Was No End To Praying For Owen Meany.

Grown-ups Shouldn’t Finish Books They’re Not Enjoying. When You’re No Longer A Child, And You No Longer Live At Home, You Don’t Have To Finish Everything On Your Plate. One Reward Of Leaving School Is That You Don’t Have To Finish Books You Don’t Like.

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I Don’t Have To Say To You Or Anyone In Our Wrestling Community That We Are A Small World Unto Ourselves And There Is Often A Big Difference In How Much We Love And Understand Each Other And How Little We’re Understood Or Appreciated By People Who Spend Their Weekends Watching Basketball.

Life Is An X-rated Soap Opera.

Kids Are Perfect People Till Grownups Get Their Hands On Them.

If You Can't Love Crudeness, How Can You Truly Love Mankind?

It Seems To Me That A Great Deal Of This Type Of Censorship Has To Do With Absolving Parents Of Responsibility - Parents Who Just Plop Their Kids In Front Of The Television And Leave Them There Hour Upon Hour.

I Try To See The Whole Woman,' Eddie Said To Hannah. 'of Course I Recognize That She's Old, But There Are Photographs - Or The Equivalent Of Photographs In One's Imagination Of Anyone's Life. A Whole Life, I Mean. I Can Picture Her When She Was Much Younger Than I Am - Because There Are Always Gestures And Expressions That Are Ingrained, Ageless. An Old Woman Doesn't See Herself As An Old Woman, And Neither Do I. I Try To See Her Her Whole Life In Her. There's Something So Moving About Someone's Whole Life.

The Book Works Better If I Know Everything I Can About The Ending. Not Just What Happens, But How It Happens And What The Language Is; Not Just The Last Sentence, But Enough Of The Sentences Surrounding That Last Sentence To Know What The Tone Of Voice Is. I Imagined It As Something Almost Musical. Then You Are Writing Toward Something; You Know The Sound Of Your Voice At The End Of The Story. That's How You Want To Sound In Those Final Sentences: The Degree That It Is Uplifting Or Not, The Degree That It Is Melancholic Or Not.

What Is Hardest To Accept About The Passage Of Time Is That The People Who Once Mattered The Most To Us Wind Up In Parentheses.

Rituals Are Comforting; Rituals Combat Loneliness.

What A Phrase That Is: 'that Explains Everything!' I Know Better Than To Think Anything 'explains Everything' Today.

I Have A Friend Who Says That Reviewers Are The Tickbirds Of The Literary Rhinoceros-but He Is Being Kind. Tickbirds Perform A Valuable Service To The Rhino And The Rhino Hardly Notices The Birds.

She Felt Detached From Her Family, And Thought It Strange How They Had Lavished So Much Attention On Her, As A Child, And Then At Some Appointed, Prearranged Time They Seemed To Stop The Flow Of Affection And Being The Expectations - As If, For A Brief Phrase, You Were Expected To Absorb Love (and Get Enough), And Then, For A Much Longer And More Serious Phase, You Were Expected To Fulfill Certain Obligations.

You've Got To Get Obsessed And Stay Obsessed.

People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough

The Gardener Had A Dread Of Small Women; He'd Always Imagined Them To Have An Anger Disproportionate To Their Size.

A Woman Half Dressed Seemed To Have Some Power, But A Man Was Simply Not As Handsome As When He Was Naked, And Not As Secure As When He Was Clothed.

I Thought Some Of The Stories Were Neat; I Liked Some Of The Liturgy And Some Of The Songs. If You're A Writer You Have Some Inclination To Pay Attention. I Didn't Just Tune It Out And Think About Baseball. So, It Had An Effect On Me.

Adolescence-is It The First Time In Life We Discover That We Have Something Terrible To Hide From Those Who Love Us?

If I Had To Be Anything," He Told Her, "i'd Probably Be A Socialist, But I Don't Want To Be Anything.

The Only Way You Get Americans To Notice Anything Is To Tax Them Or Draft Them Or Kill Them.

If You Are Lucky Enough To Find A Way Of Life You Love, You Have To Find The Courage To Live It.

More Than A Half, Maybe As Much As Two-thirds Of My Life As A Writer Is Rewriting. I Wouldn't Say I Have A Talent That's Special. It Strikes Me That I Have An Unusual Kind Of Stamina.

Life Forces Enough Final Decisions On Us. We Should Have The Sense To Avoid As Many Of The Unnecessary Ones As We Can.

It Seems To Me That People Who Don’t Learn As Easily As Others Suffer From A Kind Of Learning Disability—there Is Something Different About The Way They Comprehend Unfamiliar Material—but I Fail To See How This Disability Is Improved By Psychiatric Consultation. What Seems To Be Lacking Is A Technical Ability That Those Of Us Called ‘good Students’ Are Born With. Someone Should Concretely Study These Skills And Teach Them. What Does A Shrink Have To Do With The Process?

In A School Community, Someone Who Reads A Book For Some Secretive Purpose, Other Than Discussing It, Is Strange. What Was She Reading For?

I Take People Very Seriously. People Are All I Take Seriously, In Fact. Therefore, I Have Nothing But Sympathy For How People Behave - And Nothing But Laughter To Console Them With.

What Has Been Violated Here Is Your Freedom Of Choice, And Every Woman's Freedom Of Choice, Too.

Freedom Of Choice

The Excitement Of Anticipation Was *almost* Equal To The Thrill Of Lovemaking.

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Omar N. Bradley

Carly Rae Jepsen

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