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There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in.
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I don’t think you can come into your wisdom until you have made mistakes on your own skin and felt them in reality of your own life.
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I myself have never been enchanted by the dream of the white wedding, and, heaven help us, the expectation that this exquisitely catered event should be ’the happiest moment’ of one’s life.
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I think a lot of people who feel as though they desperately want to be married oftentimes simply desperately want to have a wedding.
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As somebody who, in my second marriage, insisted on a prenuptial agreement, I can also testify that sometimes it is an act of love to chart the exit strategy before you enter the union, in order to make sure that not only you, but your partner as well, knows that there will be no World War III should hearts and minds, for any sad reason, change.
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My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.
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When somebody has an enormous success in this culture, people start asking two questions, which are ’What are you doing now?’ and ’How are you going to beat that?’ And I have to say, I love the assumption that your intention is to beat yourself constantly - that you’re in battle against yourself.
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I should just put it bluntly, because we’re all sort of friends here now - it’s exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that’s the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o’clock in the morning, and I don’t want to go there.
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Which is - you know, like check it out, I’m pretty young, I’m only about 40 years old. I still have maybe another four decades of work left in me. And it’s exceedingly likely that anything I write from this point forward is going to be judged by the world as the work that came after the freakish success of my last book, right?
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I push every day against forces that say you have to go faster, be more effective, be more productive, you have to constantly outdo yourself, you have to constantly outdo your neighbor - all of the stuff that creates an incredibly productive society, but also a very neurotic one.
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As somebody who, in my second marriage, insisted on a prenuptial agreement, I can also testify that sometimes it is an act of love to chart the exit strategy before you enter the union, in order to make sure that not only you, but your partner as well, knows that there will be no World War III should hearts and minds, for any sad reason, change.
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You know, why at the end of your life should you assemble thousands of pages of ’Why am I so sad, why am I so depressed?’ Instead, assemble thousands of pages of why you’re so content.
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Marriage is not simply a romantic union between two people it’s also a political and economic contract of the highest order.
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I think that people who live in cultures without quite so much privilege, opportunity or grandiosity have a little bit more respect for the workings of destiny, and the limitations that people can find themselves in through no fault of their own.
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Mine is just a simple old human story - of one person trying, with great rigor and discipline, to comprehend her personal relationship with divinity.
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Unfenced by law, the unmarried lover can quit a bad relationship at any time. But you - the legally married person who wants to escape doomed love - may soon discover that a significant portion of your marriage contract belongs to the State, and that it sometimes takes a very long while for the State to grant you your leave.
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Now, if you are like me - if you are like practically anybody in America - then you probably hold some negative opinions about the French, based upon movies, rumors, recent headlines, unfortunate run-ins with Parisian waiters, or... you know... all that unpleasantness surrounding the Vichy regime.
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I should just put it bluntly, because we’re all sort of friends here now - it’s exceedingly likely that my greatest success is behind me. Oh, so Jesus, what a thought! You know that’s the kind of thought that could lead a person to start drinking gin at nine o’clock in the morning, and I don’t want to go there.
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I used to say, ’Man, I think I’d be a really good dad. I’ll be a great provider. I’m funny I’ll go on trips with them - I’ll do all sorts of stuff.’ But the momming? I’m not made for that. I have a really good mom I know what she put into it.
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And we have a little herb garden, which survived the winter thanks to global warming. It makes me feel like a cool, old Italian housewife, that I kept my rosemary alive outside all winter.