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I grew up in Mississippi being told it was a great place, but not feeling that. When I finally began reading seriously, literature showed me something about where I was from which was worthwhile.

Richard Ford

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Richard Ford
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: February 16
Novelist
Writer
Jackson
Mississippi
Feeling
Mississippi
Literature
Showed
Reading
Worthwhile
Feelings
Seriously
Place
Began
Great
Finally
Something
Grew
Told

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I started reading literature at 17 or 18, and I felt this extra beat to life.
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I've been mainly a happy boy in my life. I married the right girl and we did what we wanted to do.
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It's interesting to leave a place, interesting even to think about it. Leaving reminds us of what we can part with and what we can't, then offers us something new to look forward to, to dream about.
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Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. Yor rareley miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences.
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And I think that in myself (and perhaps evident in what I write) fear of loss and the corresponding instinct to protect myself against loss are potent forces.
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I want saner gun laws. I think all these automatic weapons should be banned, big clips and handguns should be banned. As far as I'm concerned, shotguns and hunting weapons are all that we should allow in America.
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Theres a lot to be said for doing what youre not supposed to do, and the rewards of doing what youre supposed to do are more subtle and take longer to become apparent, which maybe makes it less attractive. But your life is the blueprint you make after the building is built.
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I'm intrigued by how ordinary behavior exists so close beside its opposite.
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Married life requires shared mystery even when all the facts are known.
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Most things don't stay the way they are very long.
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