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I Think It's Only Right That Crazy People Should Have Their Own City, But I Cannot For The Life Of Me See Why A Sane Person Would Want To Go There.
-Bill Bryson
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I Think It's Only

Bill Bryson
...
I Think It's Only Right That Crazy People Should Have Their Own City, But I Cannot For The Life Of Me See Why A Sane Person Would Want To Go There.

Understanding the Quote: "i think it's only right that crazy people should have their own..."

This quote by Bill Bryson reflects deeply on the theme of crazy. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Crazy, Thinking, Should Have, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Bill Bryson interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is celebrated for insightful thoughts on crazy and thinking. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Crazy
Thinking
Should Have
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World
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Vegetables
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Thinking
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Thinking
Should Have
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Boring
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Ice Cream
Childhood
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Sandwiches
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Names
Numbers
I'm Quite Certain That If The Rest Of The World Vanished Overnight And The Development Of Cricket Were Left In Australian Hands, Within A Generation, The Players Would Be Wearing Shorts And Using The Bats To Hit Each Other, And The Thing Is, It'd Be A Much Better Game For It.
Player
Hands
Games
In Three Minutes, 98 Percent Of All The Matter There Is Or Will Ever Be Has Been Produced. We Have A Universe
Three
Matter
Minutes
England Was Full Of Words I'd Never Heard Before - Streaky Bacon, Short Back And Sides, Belisha Beacon, Serviettes, High Tea, Ice-cream Cornet.
Ice Cream
Tea
Sides
Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
Benefits
Malls
Automobile
I Have A Small Tattered Clipping That I Sometimes Carry With Meand Pull Out For Purposes Of Privateamusement. It's A Weather Forecast From Thewestern Daily Mail And It Says, In Toto: 'outlook: Dry And Warm, But Cooler With Some Rain.
Rain
Weather
Mail
You Can Always Tell A Midwestern Couple In Europe Because They Will Be Standing On A Traffic Island In The Middle Of A Busy Intersection Looking At A Windblown Map And Arguing Over Which Way Is West. European Cities, With Their Wandering Streets And Undisciplined Alleys, Drive Midwesterners Practically Insane.
Couple
Cities
Islands
I'm Definitely An American, Because I Grew Up Here. But I've Lived Very Happily In Britain.
Grew Up
Britain
Grew
When You Consider It From A Human Perspective, And Clearly It Would Be Difficult For Us To Do Otherwise, Life Is An Odd Thing. It Couldn't Wait To Get Going, But Then, Having Gotten Going, It Seemed In Very Little Hurry To Move On.
Moving
Perspective
Waiting
Everything That Has Ever Lived, Plant Or Animal, Dates Its Beginning From The Same Primordial Twitch. At Some Point In An Unimaginably Distant Past, Some Little Bag Of Chemicals Fidgeted To Life. It Absorbed Some Nutrients, Gently Pulsed, Had A Brief Existence. This Much May Have Happened Many Times Before. But This Ancestral Packet Did Something Additional And Extraordinary. It Cleaved Itself And Produced An Heir. A Tiny Bundle Of Genetic Material Passed From One Living Entity To Another, And Has Never Stopped Moving Since. It Was The Moment Of Creation For Us All.
Moving
Animal
Past
Why Is It, I Wondered, That Old People Are Always So Self-centered And Excitable? But I Just Smiled Benignly And Stood Back, Comforted By The Thought That Soon They Would Be Dead.
Self
People
Would Be
But I Got A Great Deal Else From The Experience. I Learned To Pitch A Tent And Sleep Beneath The Stars. For A Brief, Proud Period I Was Slender And Fit. I Gained A Profound Respect For The Wilderness And Nature And The Benign Dark Power Of Woods. I Understand Now, In A Way I Never Did Before, The Colossal Scale Of The World. I Found Patience And Fortitude That I Didn't Know I Had. I Discovered An America That Millions Of People Scarcely Know Exists. I Made A Friend. I Came Home.
Stars
Home
Sleep
I Don't Know Whether I'm Misanthropic. It Seems To Me I'm Constantly Disappointed. I'm Very Easily Disappointed.
Misanthropic
Disappointed
Knows
It Is A Slightly Arresting Notion That If You Were To Pick Yourself Apart With Tweezers, One Atom At A Time, You Would Produce A Mound Of Fine Atomic Dust, None Of Which Had Ever Been Alive But All Of Which Had Once Been You.
Life
Science
Dust
No One Knows, Incidentally, Why Australia's Spiders Are So Extravagantly Toxic; Capturing Small Insects And Injecting Them With Enough Poison To Drop A Horse Would Appear To Be The Most Literal Case Of Overkill. Still, It Does Mean That Everyone Gives Them Lots Of Space.
Horse
Mean
Australia
But What Is Life To A Lichen ? Yet Its Impulse To Exist, To Be, Is Every Bit As Strong As Ours Arguably Even Stronger. If I Were Told That I Had To Spend Decades Being A Furry Growth On A Rock In The Woods, I Believe I Would Lose The Will To Go On.
Strong
Believe
Rocks
I Do Find London Exciting. Much As I Hate To Agree With That Tedious Old Git Samuel Johnson, And Despite The Pompous Imbecility Of His Famous Remark About When A Man Is Tired Of London He Is Tired Of Life...i Can't Dispute It.
Hate
Tired
Men
I Had To Drive To Minneapolis Once, And Went On A Back Road Just To See The Country. But There Was Nothing To See. It's Just Flat And Hot, And Full Of Corn And Soybeans And Hogs. Every Once In A While You Come Across A Farm Or Some Dead Little Town Where The Liveliest Thing Is The Flies.
Country
Soybeans
Littles
Hardly Anyone Ever Leaves. This Is Because Des Moines Is The Most Powerful Hypnotic Known To Man. Outside Town There Is A Big Sign That Says, Welcome To Des Moines. This Is What Death Is Like. There Isn't Really. I Just Made That Up. But The Place Does Get A Grip On You.
Powerful
Men
Doe
Woods Are Not Like Other Spaces. To Begin With, They Are Cubic. Their Trees Surround You, Loom Over You, Press In From All Sides. Woods Choke Off Views & Leave You Muddled & Without Bearings. They Make You Feel Small & Confused & Vulnerable, Like A Small Child Lost In A Crowd Of Strange Legs. Stand In A Desert Or Prairie & You Know You Are In A Big Space. Stand In The Woods And You Only Sense It. They Are Vast, Featureless Nowhere. And They Are Alive.
Children
Confused
Views
It Isn't Easy To Become A Fossil. ... Only About One Bone In A Billion, It Is Thought, Becomes Fossilized. If That Is So, It Means That The Complete Fossil Legacy Of All The Americans Alive Today - That's 270 Million People With 206 Bones Each - Will Only Be About 50 Bones, One-quarter Of A Complete Skeleton. That's Not To Say, Of Course, That Any Of These Bones Will Ever Actually Be Found.
Mean
Science
Skeletons
On The Dashboard Of Our Family Car Is A Shallow Indentation About The Size Of A Paperback Book. If You Are Looking For Somewhere To Put Your Sunglasses Or Spare Change, It Is The Obvious Place, And It Works Extremely Well, I Must Say, So Long As The Car Is Not Actually Moving. However, As Soon As You Put The Car In Motion ... Everything Slides Off ... It Can Hold Nothing That Has Not Been Nailed To It. So I Ask You: What Then Is It For?
Moving
Book
Long
Physics Is Really Nothing More Than A Search For Ultimate Simplicity, But So Far All We Have Is A Kind Of Elegant Messiness.
Simplicity
Kind
Physics
My Favourite Fellow Of The Royal Society Is The Reverend Thomas Bayes, An Obscure 18th-century Kent Clergyman And A Brilliant Mathematician Who Devised A Complex Equation Known As The Bayes Theorem, Which Can Be Used To Work Out Probability Distributions. It Had No Practical Application In His Lifetime, But Today, Thanks To Computers, Is Routinely Used In The Modelling Of Climate Change, Astrophysics And Stock-market Analysis.
Science
Work Out
Royal
Language Is More Fashion Than Science, And Matters Of Usage, Spelling And Pronunciation Tend To Wander Around Like Hemlines.
Fashion
Writing
Matter
We Used To Build Civilizations. Now We Build Shopping Malls.
Badass
Bad Ass
Civilization
Take A Moment From Time To Time To Remember That You Are Alive. I Know This Sounds A Trifle Obvious, But It Is Amazing How Little Time We Take To Remark Upon This Singular And Gratifying Fact. By The Most Astounding Stroke Of Luck An Infinitesimal Portion Of All The Matter In The Universe Came Together To Create You And For The Tiniest Moment In The Great Span Of Eternity You Have The Incomparable Privilege To Exist.
Luck
Together
Sound
Very Little Of What America Does Is Actually Bad, And I Don't Think It Ever Does Anything Anywhere That Is Intentionally Bad. I Mean, Sometimes We Make Mistakes And Bad Judgments And Kind Of Back The Wrong Regimes And Things, But By And Large What America Does Is Really Good.
Mistake
Mean
Thinking
In A Funny Way, Nothing Makes You Feel More Like A Native Of Your Own Country Than To Live Where Nearly Everyone Is Not.
Country
Way
Feels
Australians Are Very Unfair In This Way. They Spend Half Of Any Conversation Insisting That The Country's Dangers Are Vastly Overrated And That There's Nothing To Worry About, And The Other Half Telling You How Six Months Ago Their Uncle Bob Was Driving To Mudgee When A Tiger Snake Slid Out From Under The Dashboard And Bit Him On The Groin, But That It's Okay Now Because He's Off The Life Support Machine And They've Discovered He Can Communicate With Eye Blinks.
Country
Uncles
Eye
Finally, This Being America, There Is The Constant Possibility Of Murder.
America
Murder
Possibility
It Is Always Quietly Thrilling To Find Yourself Looking At A World You Know Well But Have Never Seen From Such An Angle Before.
Finding Yourself
World
Angle
English Is Full Of Booby Traps For The Unwary Foreigner. Any Language Where The Unassuming Word Fly Signifies An Annoying Insect, A Means Of Travel, And A Critical Part Of A Gentleman's Apparel Is Clearly Asking To Be Mangled.
Mean
Gentleman
Asking
Nearly A Quarter Of American Men Were In The Armed Forces. The Rest Were In School, In Prison, Or Were George W. Bush.
School
Men
Prison
A World Without Newspapers Or A World Where The Newspapers Are Purely Electronic And You Read Them On A Screen Is Not A Very Appealing World.
World
Newspapers
Screens
It's An Unnerving Thought That We May Be The Living Universe's Supreme Achievement And Its Worst Nightmare Simultaneously.
Worst Nightmares
Achievement
May
I Became Quietly Seized With That Nostalgia That Overcomes You When You Have Reached The Middle Of Your Life And Your Father Has Recently Died And It Dawns On You That When He Went He Took Some Of You With Him.
Father
Dawn
Overcoming
Germans Are Flummoxed By Humor, The Swiss Have No Concept Of Fun, The Spanish Think There Is Nothing At All Ridiculous About Eating Dinner At Midnight, And The Italians Should Never, Ever Have Been Let In On The Invention Of The Motor Car.
Inspirational
Sarcastic
Fun
If You Can Imagine A Man Having A Vasectomy Without Anesthetic To The Sound Of Frantic Sitar-playing, You Will Have Some Idea Of What Popular Turkish Music Is Like.
Men
Ideas
Sound
Where I Grew Up, In Des Moines, Iowa, There Is Hardly Any Downtown Economic Activity Now. Everybody Shops In Malls - You Don't Find A Sense Of Community In Malls.
Iowa
Community
Downtown
The Number Of People On Whose Cooperative Efforts Your Eventual Existence Depends Has Risen To Approximately 1,000,000,000,000,000,000, Which Is Several Thousand Times The Total Number Of People Who Have Ever Lived.
Numbers
People
Effort
18th Century Scientists, The French In Particular, Seldom Did Things Simply If An Absurdly Demanding Alternative Was Available.
Alternatives
Scientist
Century
Protons Give An Atom Its Identity, Electrons Its Personality.
Giving
Personality
Identity
I Just Use My Life Story As A Kind Of Device On Which To Hang Comic Observations. It's Not My Interest Or Instinct To Tell The World Anything Pertinent About Myself Or My Family.
Stories
Use
World
There Are Three Stages In Scientific Discovery. First, People Deny That It Is True, Then They Deny That It Is Important; Finally They Credit The Wrong Person.
Discovery
People
Important
From An Evolutionary Point Of View, Sex Is Really Just A Reward Mechanism To Encourage Us To Pass On Our Genetic Material.
Sex
Views
Rewards
I Can't Think Of Anything That Excites A Greater Sense Of Childlike Wonder Than To Be In A Country Where You Are Ignorant Of Almost Everything.
Inspirational
Funny
Country
Des Moines Is Like Your Typical American City; It's Just These Concentric Circles Of Malls, Built Outward From The City.
Cities
Circles
Typical
The Human Diet Consists Of Just Nine Plants: Corn, Rice, Wheat, Potatoes, Cassava, Sorghum, Millet, Beans, Barley, Rye And Oats.
Oats
Corn
Nine
We Are So Used To The Notion Of Our Own Inevitability As Life's Dominant Species That It Is Hard To Grasp That We Are Here Only Because Of Timely Extraterrestrial Bangs And Other Random Flukes. The One Thing We Have In Common With All Other Living Things Is That For Nearly Four Billions Years Our Ancestors Have Managed To Slip Through A Series Of Closing Doors Every Time We Needed Them To.
Doors
Years
Four
Absolute Brain Size Does Not Tell You Everything Or Possibly Sometimes Even Much. Elephants And Whales Both Have Brains Larger Than Ours, But You Wouldn't Have Much Trouble Outwitting Them In Contract Negotiations.
Whales
Elephants
Brain
Christmas Tree Stands Are The Work Of The Devil And They Want You Dead.
Tree
Devil
Want
I Come From Des Moines. Someone Had To.
Des Moines
The Whole Of The Global Economy Is Based On Supplying The Cravings Of Two Per Cent Of The World's Population.
Two
Population
World
Making English Grammar Conform To Latin Rules Is Like Asking People To Play Baseball Using The Rules Of Football.
Baseball
Football
Latin
Tune Your Television To Any Channel It Doesn't Receive And About 1 Percent Of The Dancing Static You See Is Accounted For By This Ancient Remnant Of The Big Bang. The Next Time You Complain That There Is Nothing On, Remember That You Can Always Watch The Birth Of The Universe.
Dancing
Tunes
Watches
I Turned To My Own Bunk And Examined It With A Kind Of Appalled Fascination. If The Mattress Stains Were Anything To Go By, A Previous User Had Not So Much Suffered From Incontinence As Rejoiced In It. He Had Evidently Included The Pillow In His Celebrations.
Travel
Fascination
Bunk
The Remarkable Position In Which We Find Ourselves Is That We Don't Actually Know What We Actually Know.
Remarkable
Position
Knows
It Was One Of Those Sumptuous Days When The World Is Full Of Autumn Muskiness And Tangy, Crisp Perfection: Vivid Blue Sky, Deep Green Fields, Leaves In A Thousand Luminous Hues. It Is A Truly Astounding Sight When Every Tree In A Landscape Becomes Individual, When Each Winding Back Highway And Plump Hillside Is Suddenly And Infinitely Splashed With Every Sharp Shade That Nature Can Bestow - Flaming Scarlet, Lustrous Gold, Throbbing Vermilion, Fiery Orange.
Autumn
Green Fields
Sight
At The Foot Of The Mountain, The Park Ended And Suddenly All Was Squalor Again. I Was Once More Struck By This Strange Compartmentalization That Goes On In America -- A Belief That No Commercial Activities Must Be Allowed Inside The Park, But Permitting Unrestrained Development Outside, Even Though The Landscape There May Be Just As Outstanding. America Has Never Quite Grasped That You Can Live In A Place Without Making It Ugly, That Beauty Doesn't Have To Be Confined Behind Fences, As If A National Park Were A Sort Of Zoo For Nature.
Zoos
Feet
America
Disassemble The Cells Of A Sponge (by Passing Them Through A Sieve, For Instance), Then Dump Them Into A Solution, And They Will Find Their Way Back Together And Build Themselves Into A Sponge Again. You Can Do This To Them Over And Over, And They Will Doggedly Reassemble Because, Like You And Me And Every Other Living Thing, They Have One Overwhelming Impulse: To Continue To Be.
Cells
Together
Way
Cheapness Is A Great Virtue.
Virtue
Cheapness
I Still Enjoy Traveling A Lot. I Mean, It Amazes Me That I Still Get Excited In Hotel Rooms Just To See What Kind Of Shampoo They've Left Me.
Mean
Rooms
Kind
Taxonomy Is Described Sometimes As A Science And Sometimes As An Art, But Really It’s A Battleground.
Art
Taxonomy
Sometimes
Because Time Moves More Slowly In Kid World ... It Goes On For Decades ... It Is Adult Life That Is Over In A Twinkling.
Moving
Kids
Adults
In France, A Chemist Named Pilatre De Rozier Tested The Flammability Of Hydrogen By Gulping A Mouthful And Blowing Across An Open Flame, Proving At A Stroke That Hydrogen Is Indeed Explosively Combustible And That Eyebrows Are Not Necessarily A Permanent Feature Of One's Face.
Science
Flames
Eyebrows
Distance Changes Utterly When You Take The World On Foot. A Mile Becomes A Long Way, Two Miles Literally Considerable, Ten Miles Whopping, Fifty Miles At The Very Limits Of Conception. The World, You Realize, Is Enormous In A Way That Only You And A Small Community Of Fellow Hikers Know. Planetary Scale Is Your Little Secret.
Distance
Two
Feet
I Tell The Kids That, Even In A Childhood Marked By Despair And Deprivation, I Knew That No Matter What Happened, I Still Had My Family, Or At Least The Remnants Of A Family Ripped Apart By Divorce And Then Glued Back Together In Various Odd Arrangements Through A Series Of Ill- Advised Remarriages. It Was Good To Know I Had A Solid Foundation.
Kids
Divorce
Childhood
In The Countryside, Litter Doesn't Have A Friend. It Doesn't Have Anybody Who's Saying, 'wait A Minute, This Is Really Starting To Get Out Of Control.'
Waiting
Starting
Minutes
And Before Long There Will Be No More Milk In Bottles Delivered To The Doorstep Or Sleepy Rural Pubs, And The Countryside Will Be Mostly Shopping Centers And Theme Parks. Forgive Me. I Don't Mean To Get Upset. But You Are Taking My World Away From Me, Piece By Little Piece, And Sometimes It Just Pisses Me Off. Sorry.
Sorry
Mean
Shopping
So, If People Didn’t Settle Down To Take Up Farming, Why Then Did They Embark On This Entirely New Way Of Living? We Have No Idea – Or Actually, We Have Lots Of Ideas, But We Don’t Know If Any Of Them Are Right. According To Felipe Fernández-armesto, At Least Thirty-eight Theories Have Been Put Forward To Explain Why People Took To Living In Communities: That They Were Driven To It By Climatic Change, Or By A Wish To Stay Near Their Dead, Or By A Powerful Desire To Brew And Drink Beer, Which Could Only Be Indulged By Staying In One Place.
Powerful
Beer
Eight
I Love The Feeling Of Being Anonymous In A City I've Never Been Before.
Travel
Cities
Feelings
The First Book I Did - The First Successful Book - Was A Kind Of A Travel Book, And Publishers In Britain Encouraged Me To Do More.
Book
Successful
Firsts
If You Believe In God, It's Much More Fantastic To Believe That He Created This Universe Billions Of Years Ago And Set In Motion This Long Train Of Activities That Eventually Resulted In Us. I Think That's So Much More Satisfying, More Thrilling, Than The Idea That It Was All Done In Seven Days.
Believe
Thinking
Years
As James Surowiecki Noted In A New Yorker Article, Given A Choice Between Developing Antibiotics That People Will Take Every Day For Two Weeks And Antidepressants That People Will Take Every Day For Ever, Drug Companies Not Surprisingly Opt For The Latter. Although A Few Antibiotics Have Been Toughened Up A Bit, The Pharmaceutical Industry Hasn't Given Us An Entirely New Antibiotic Since The 1970s.
Two
People
Choices
I Refer Of Course To The Soaring Wonder Of The Age Known As The Eiffel Tower. Never In History Has A Structure Been More Technologically Advanced, Materially Obsolescent, And Gloriously Pointless All At The Same Time.
Age
Towers
Wonder
Britain Still Has The Most Reliably Beautiful Countryside Of Anywhere In The World. I Would Hate To Be Part Of The Generation That Allowed That To Be Lost.
Beautiful
Hate
Generations
Energy Is Liberated Matter, Matter Is Energy Waiting To Happen.
Waiting
Energy
Matter
If You Go Out On The Appalachian Trail, You Have To Bring So Much More Equipment - A Tent, Sleeping Bag - But If You Go Hiking In England, Or Europe, Generally, Towns And Villages Are Near Enough Together At The End Of The Day You Can Always Go To A Nice Little Inn And Have A Hot Bath And Something To Drink.
Nice
Sleep
Europe
The People Are Immensely Likable— Cheerful, Extrovert, Quick-witted, And Unfailingly Obliging. Their Cities Are Safe And Clean And Nearly Always Built On Water. They Have A Society That Is Prosperous, Well Ordered, And Instinctively Egalitarian. The Food Is Excellent. The Beer Is Cold. The Sun Nearly Always Shines. There Is Coffee On Every Corner. Life Doesn't Get Much Better Than This.
Coffee
Beer
Cities
It Sometimes Occurs To Me That The British Have More Heritage Than Isgood For Them.
Heritage
Sometimes
British
Not Writing The Same Kind Of Book Over And Over Again Is To Me The Real Pleasure Of What I Do.
Real
Book
Writing
There Is Something About The Momentum Of Travel That Makes You Want To Just Keep Moving, To Never Stop.
Moving
Momentum
Want
Eating In Sweden Is Really Just A Series Of Heartbreaks.
Sweden
Eating
Series
Taking A Scenic Route In Southeast Iowa Is Like Talking About A Good Barry Manilow Album. You Have To Make Certain Allowances.
Talking
Iowa
Albums
To My Mind, The Greatest Reward And Luxury Of Travel Is To Be Able To Experience Everyday Things As If For The First Time, To Be In A Position In Which Almost Nothing Is So Familiar It Is Taken For Granted.
Life
Summer
Travel
Roads Get Wider And Busier And Less Friendly To Pedestrians. And All Of The Development Based Around Cars, Like Big Sprawling Shopping Malls. Everything Seems To Be Designed For The Benefit Of The Automobile And Not The Benefit Of The Human Being.
Shopping
Car
Friendly
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