Quote

The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible.

Walter Kirn

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Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Even
Negotiable
Make
Potent
Draw
Draws
Level
Levels
Virtue
Lines
Indefensible

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The best anti-depressant pill for me would be one the size of a house so you could drop it on me and put me out of my misery.
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Everyone loves a witch hunt as long as it's someone else's witch being hunted.
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When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?
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In the age of networked everything, life moves sideways and covers lots of ground while barely touching the earth.
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Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.
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The market is the only critic that matters.
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Other people's devotions embarrassed me, perhaps because, like other people's kisses, they rarely looked genuine when viewed too closely.
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Reason leavened with a little wit (if possible) is the real alternative to hate speech, meaning that there's no better time for it.
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Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?
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To apologize for your personal absolutes, for what Sandy Pinter calls your “Core Attachments,” means apologizing for your very existence.
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Short stories are fiction's R & D department, and failed or less-than-conclusive experiments are not just to be expected but to be hoped for.
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I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.
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A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.
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Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.
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I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn - small, tasty delights - and I like to gorge on them now and then.
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I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.
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Some strangers become more important to you than family, maybe because you're not expected to love them. You can leave them whenever you want to. They can, too. Every moment together is a choice.
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The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.
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What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?
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I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.
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