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If the sad truth be known, writers, being the misfits we are, probably ought not to belong to families in the first place. We simply are too self-interested, though we may excuse the flaw by calling it 'focused.'

Roger Rosenblatt

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Roger Rosenblatt
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Journalist
Truth
Writers
Misfits
May
Interested
Flaw
Ought
Flaws
Firsts
Simply
Belong
Self
Probably
Families
First
Though
Excuse
Known
Focused
Place
Calling

More quotes by Roger Rosenblatt

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Remote control. Ingenious contradiction of terms. Fits like a handshake. Aims like a gun.
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Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.
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The problem with death is absence
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The trick in foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps. The only way to be sure is to rub each clump between your thumb and index finger, which makes a mess of your hands.
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A library should be like a pair of open arms.
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Whatever you think matters - doesn't. Follow this rule, and you will add decades to your life.
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What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.
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Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: 'Your life counts for something.' In no other subject that I know of is that message given.
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Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.
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A five-year old is in a pretty good position to assess who is beautiful and who is not. Removed from the confusions of sexuality, he or she can judge a face as a face.
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Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death--that is, they attempt suicide--twice as often as men, though men are more successful because they use surer weapons, like guns.
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If a man spends enough time in a library, he may actually change his mind. I have seen it happen.
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The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.
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If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.
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The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.
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Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.
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For those at home, as well as for those in battle, war is curiously disabling. The mere realization that one's country is at war poisons the bloodstream, creates an incessant mood of worry that infiltrates even the most casual moments.
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Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die and decrease the surplus population. Scrooge may not have had God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.
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If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something.
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Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb.
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