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There Is A Stage You Reach, Deagle Thinks, A Time Somewhere In Early Middle Age, When Your Past Ceases To Be About Yourself. Your Connection To Your Former Life Is Like A Dream Or Delirium, And That Person Who You Once Were Is Merely A Fond Acquaintance, Or A Beloved Character From A Storybook. This Is How Memory Becomes Nostalgia. They Are Two Very Different Things - The Same Way That A Person Is Different From A Photograph Of A Person.

-Dan Chaon

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There Is A Stage

Dan Chaon

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There Is A Stage You Reach, Deagle Thinks, A Time Somewhere In Early Middle Age, When Your Past Ceases To Be About Yourself. Your Connection To Your Former Life Is Like A Dream Or Delirium, And That Person Who You Once Were Is Merely A Fond Acquaintance, Or A Beloved Character From A Storybook. This Is How Memory Becomes Nostalgia. They Are Two Very Different Things - The Same Way That A Person Is Different From A Photograph Of A Person.

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Sometimes He Thinks That If He Could Only Trace The Path Of His Life Carefully Enough, Everything Would Become Clear. The Ways That He Screwed Up Would Make Sense. He Closes His Eyes Tightly. His Life Wasn't Always A Mistake, He Thinks, And He Breathes Uncertainly For Awhile, Trying To Find A Pathway Into Unconsciousness, Into Sleep.

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There Is A Stage You Reach, Deagle Thinks, A Time Somewhere In Early Middle Age, When Your Past Ceases To Be About Yourself. Your Connection To Your Former Life Is Like A Dream Or Delirium, And That Person Who You Once Were Is Merely A Fond Acquaintance, Or A Beloved Character From A Storybook. This Is How Memory Becomes Nostalgia. They Are Two Very Different Things - The Same Way That A Person Is Different From A Photograph Of A Person.

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You Can Recognize In Your Own Reading Habits What Writers Are Doing That Works And What Doesn't. I'm Becoming Much More Aware Of That After Reading A Decade Of Student Stories.

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One Of The Things I Rarely Do Is Write About Sex.

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Maybe It's Because I Grew Up During The Mtv Generation, But To Me A Perfect Song Is One I Can Imagine A Music Video To, A Song That Can Take You Into A Dream.

I Knew I Wanted To Play Around With Genre-esque Imagery, And The Identity Theft Stuff Came In The Middle, When I Was Figuring Out How The Characters Were Connected To Those Images.

I Can't Understand How People Can Settle For Having Just One Life. I Remember We Were In English Class And We Were Talking About That Poem By - That One Guy. David Frost. 'two Roads Diverged In A Yellow Wood-' You Know This Poem, Right? 'two Roads Diverged In A Yellow Wood, And Sorry I Could Not Travel Both And Be One Traveler, Long I Stood And Looked Down One As Far As I Could, To Where It Bent In The Undergrowth-" "i Loved That Poem. But I Remember Thinking To Myself: Why? How Come You Can't Travel Both? That Seemed Really Unfair To Me.

The Kind Of Person I Find Myself Interested In Is A Cross Between Being Very Emotionally Complex And Very Immature. That's What I Felt I Was Like When I Was Younger.

The Feeling Of Being An Outsider, And The Identity Theme, Are Hardwired Into Me. If There's Anything Really Autobiographical In My Fiction, It's That Feeling. I Always Feel That Way.

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