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He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!Ann Patchett
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It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.Ann Patchett
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Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.Ann Patchett
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Katsumi Hosokawa - (he) believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music.Ann Patchett
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He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.Ann Patchett
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He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.Ann Patchett
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There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.Ann Patchett
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Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.Ann Patchett
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Gen was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged.Ann Patchett
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If want a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else.Ann Patchett
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...as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice.Ann Patchett
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They lived their lives only for the hour that lay ahead of them.Ann Patchett
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But it is never about who has given what. That is not the way of gifts. This is not a business we are conducting.Ann Patchett
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The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.Ann Patchett
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Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement.Ann Patchett
16
Never had he thought, never once, that such a woman existed, one who stood so close to God that God's own voice poured from her. How far she must have gone inside herself to call up that voice. It was as if the voice came from the center part of the earth and by the sheer effort and diligence of her will she had pulled it up through the dirt and rock and through the floorboards of the house, up into her feet, where it pulled through her, reaching, lifting, warmed by her, and then out of the white lily of her throat and straight to God in heaven. It was a miracle and he wept for the gift of bearing witness. .Ann Patchett
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...was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women...Ann Patchett