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“The academic mind can eat away the very basis of its own assurance ... produce contortions when it tries to bend over backward ... allow itself to be dismayed by the picture it has created of relentless historical process.”
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“When I'm in the Switzerland backcountry and nobody around looks like me, people were like, 'Can I touch your hair?'”
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“I accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. That is the timeless thing,”
Source : "Casey At The Mike" by Susan Orlean, www.nytimes.com. May 6, 1990. 
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“It is very difficult to be a non-religious Jew outside Israel. The synagogue keeps Jews together in the Diaspora. In Israel, you are a Jew from morning to night. We don't even have to think about it, just as a Dutch citizen doesn't spend his whole day thinking about the fact that he is a Dutch citizen. It's a given.”
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“Well, I had a wolverine. It was supposed to be a cat, but Jason (Patric) is allergic to cats. I can't remember where I got it. Some back alley taxidermy, maybe? But I think I got it at The Bay taxidermy department. Downtown Winnipeg. Next to the tumbleweeds.”
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“Attractive Etonians who go straight onto the Stock Exchange missing University on their fathers advice: the raw material of the great bores.”
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“In your 20s, you're checking your bank account to make sure you're not broke. In your 30s, you're looking at yourself and realizing you're broken.”
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“I think life is difficult and that's that. I am not at all - absolutely not at all - interested in the pursuit of happiness. I am not interested in the pursuit of positivity. I am interested in pursuing a truth, and the truth often seems to be not happiness but its opposite.”
Source : "Jamaica Kincaid Hates Happy Endings". Interview with Marilyn Berlin Snell, www.motherjones.com. September, 1997.
