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Given Loughner's obsession with meaninglessness and language, maybe Foucault & Derrida deserve some fault here, too.

Walter Kirn

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Walter Kirn
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: August 3
Novelist
Writer
Akron
Ohio
Deserve
Maybe
Language
Given
Foucault
Derrida
Obsession
Fault
Faults

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realized that at a level I'd never been conscious we'd been engaged in a game of wits for years. I suppose most writer-subject pairings are like that. Of course, I'd set aside my plan to write about him [Clark Rockfeller] as soon as I'd gotten to know him some, but now I'd resumed that intention.
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Love is a powerful painkiller.
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I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.
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Most writers' view of the New West is either phony - obsessed with the same tired mythology - or it's obsessed with anti-mythology, ... There's not a lot of realistic, observant writing about the West right now.
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He knows, as all the cleverest ones do, that no human being is so interesting that he can't make himself more interesting still by acting retarded at random intervals.
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A writer is someone who tells you one thing so someday he can tell his readers another thing: what he was thinking but declined to say, or what he would have thought had he been wiser. A writer turns his life into material, and if you're in his life, he uses yours, too.
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Quiet cunning bested boastful brawn
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The best critic needn't be right, just interesting.
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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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A writer turns his life into material, and if you’re in his life, he uses yours, too.
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It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.
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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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You thought you were found but you realize that you were lost, and someday you may discover that you're lost now.
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I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.
Walter Kirn
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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?
Walter Kirn
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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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At the beginning of a novel, a writer needs confidence, but after that what's required is persistence. These traits sound similar. They aren't. Confidence is what politicians, seducers and currency speculators have, but persistence is a quality found in termites. It's the blind drive to keep on working that persists after confidence breaks down.
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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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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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I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.
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