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When we are no longer capable of love, we are no longer alive.
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I taught myself to write in order to understand who I was and so yes, writing was an act of self-actualization in the beginning.
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When I was little, I went to a Catholic school and was required to go to church every morning and with my parents on Sundays, so I spent a lot of time sitting on a wooden pew. Angels are sort of a relief. If you're looking around, the other imagery is so dark and heavy. Looking at the beautifully rendered pictures of angels was more uplifting.
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Maybe that is what marriage is: Two people creating a cult together.
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That's l'amour: we willingly walk into the future blindfolded.
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I started listening to the Cure around the time I discovered Joy Division and, like Joy Division, they have shaped my taste in all sorts of dark and dreary ways.
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I understood that the stories we believe have power over us. They work into our bodies and minds and change us from inside out. What if one day these stories become something stronger, more real, than fairy tales?
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As a girl, I used to zip myself into a snowsuit, fall into the deepest snowdrift I could find and sweep my arms and legs into the powder, making snow angels that would crumble within minutes of their genesis. Despite their rapid disappearance, something about these frozen, evanescent angels has stayed with me ever since.
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Stories of a mythical angel paradise called an Angelopolis are like Peter Pan's Never Never Land.
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Finding one's voice - or creating a narrative voice that has the power to carry your story - is the hardest part.
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I always knew I wanted to write really imaginative fiction - fiction that was very different from my real life.
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If I'm not writing, I'm not fully living. It has become the essential element that defines who I am.
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When the time comes, we can only expect that we have learned enough to succeed.
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Don't stay in a bad situation - whether it is a relationship or a job - out of fear of failure. It's not a failure to walk away and choose to be happy. It takes a lot of courage.
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Reckless action is worse than wise restraint.
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There are always those who would put on armour and go into battle. but the real genius is in finding a way to get what you desire without dying for it.
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I believe a good memoir should have all of the narrative elements of a novel: character development, dialogue, descriptive language, and metaphor.
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Since the Middle Ages, people have been writing about angels. Angelology was actually at one point a scholastic discipline.
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Beautiful music plays, but not everyone with ears can hear it.
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Every once in awhile you find a novel so magical that there is no escaping its spell. The Night Circus is one of these rarities - engrossing, beautifully written and utterly enchanting. If you choose to read just one novel this year, this is it
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But, most important, we must not become as base and treacherous as our enemies.
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I live in New York now, and miss France quite a bit. Of course, the reality of living in a small village in the south of France was very different than the fantasy I had of living in France. Over the years I spent there, that fantasy was worn away and I found a more realistic version of France than the one I began with. I wouldn't say the spell ever goes away, but transforms. Now that I understand French culture more intimately, and speak fluent French, I have a different, more solid, relationship to the country.
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If there are too many cooks in the kitchen, the dish is not going to work out.
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I think angels definitely offer all the imaginative possibilities that vampires do, and I think they've actually been popular in Western culture for longer than vampires have been. I hope they become a part of the culture again in a new way.