Masterpiece Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Masterpiece. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
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I'm a little distracted by this English French American Boy Masterpiece.
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Stephanie Perkins (Anna and the French Kiss (Anna and the French Kiss, #1))
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Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.
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Osho
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The smallest feline is a masterpiece.
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Leonardo da Vinci
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What doesn't kill us sharpens us. Hardens us. Schools us. You're beating plowshares into swords, Vosch. You are remaking us. We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.
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Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1))
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Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.
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Arthur Schopenhauer
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Everything great in the world is done by neurotics; they alone founded our religions and created our masterpieces.
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Marcel Proust
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Which of us could say we were more sinned against than sinning? We were so easily manipulated - confusion made a masterpiece of us.
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M.L. Rio (If We Were Villains)
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You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey)
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Edit your life frequently and ruthlessly. It's your masterpiece after all.
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Nathan W. Morris
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The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature.
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Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles (Manon Lescaut)
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I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
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Ernest Hemingway
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Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.
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William Shakespeare (Macbeth)
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You are the masterpiece of your own life. You are the Michelangelo of your own life. The David you are sculpturing is you (Dr. Joe Vitale)
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Rhonda Byrne (The Secret (The Secret, #1))
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My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece
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Claude Monet
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For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
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Virginia Woolf (A Room of One’s Own)
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Be true to yourself. Make each day your masterpiece. Help others. Drink deeply from good books. Make friendship a fine art. Build a shelter against a rainy day. Pray for guidance and give thanks for your blessings every day.
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John Wooden
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Women, as some witty Frenchman once put it, inspire us with the desire to do masterpieces and always prevent us from carrying them out.
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Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
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You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients.
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Julia Child
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Existence is a series of footnotes to a vast, obscure, unfinished masterpiece.
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Vladimir Nabokov
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Treat your body carefully. Take care of it. Don’t let anyone abuse it, and don’t abuse it yourself. Every inch of your skin I made diligently; months I slaved over you. You are my masterpiece.
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Christina Lauren (Love and Other Words)
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Confusion hath fuck his masterpiece.
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William S. Burroughs (Naked Lunch)
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To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. All other things, ruling, hoarding, building, are only little appendages and props, at most.
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Michel de Montaigne
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Time is the brush of God, as he paints his masterpiece on the heart of humanity.
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Ravi Zacharias
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When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.
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John Ruskin
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Make your lives a masterpiece, you only get one canvas.
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E.A. Bucchianeri (Brushstrokes of a Gadfly (Gadfly Saga, #1))
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Prayer of an Anonymous Abbess: Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity. Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples' affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends. Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point. Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains -- they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing. I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn't agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong. Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint -- it is so hard to live with some of them -- but a harsh old person is one of the devil's masterpieces. Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so. Amen
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Anonymous
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Nature's great masterpiece, an elephant; the only harmless great thing.
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John Donne
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Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
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Lawrence Ferlinghetti (City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology)
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I am not a little bit of many things; but I am the sufficient representation of many things. I am not an incompletion of all these races; but I am a masterpiece of the prolific. I am an entirety, I am not a lack of anything; rather I am a whole of many things. God did not see it needful to make me generic. He thinks I am better than that.
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C. JoyBell C.
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Today is yours to shape. Create a masterpiece!
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Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
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I find it incredibly amazing how at every sunset, the sky is a different shade. No cloud is ever in the same place. Each day is a new masterpiece. A new wonder. A new memory.
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Sanober Khan
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My body is an ugly masterpiece that lives off the beauty of sound.
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Chad Sugg
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If a composer suffers from loss of sleep and his sleeplessness induces him to turn out masterpieces, what a profitable loss it is!
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (Night Flight)
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Rowena Clark and I had met on the first day of our mixed media class. I’d sat down at her table and said, β€œMind if I join you? Figure the best way to learn about art is to sit with a masterpiece.” Maybe I was in love, but I was still Adrian Ivashkov. Rowena had fixed me with a flat look. β€œLet’s get one thing straight. I can see through crap a mile away, and I like girls, not guys, so if you can’t handle me telling you what’s what, then you’d better take your one-liners and hair gel somewhere else. I don’t go to this school to put up with pretty boys like you. I’m here to face dubious employment options with a painting degree and then go get a Guinness after class.” I’d scooted my chair closer to the table. β€œYou and I are going to get along just fine.
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Richelle Mead (The Fiery Heart (Bloodlines, #4))
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You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress, simultaneously.
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Sophia Bush
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If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
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I showed the grown ups my masterpiece, and I asked them if my drawing scared them. They answered:"why be scared of a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
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Antoine de Saint-ExupΓ©ry (The Little Prince)
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Make every day your masterpiece.
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John Wooden
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The only angels we need invoke are those of our better nature: reason, honesty, and love. The only demons we must fear are those that lurk inside every human mind: ignorance, hatred, greed, and faith, which is surely the devil's masterpiece.
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Sam Harris (The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)
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You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never Rises from the soul, and sways The heart of every single hearer, With deepest power, in simple ways. You’ll sit forever, gluing things together, Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps, Blowing on a miserable fire, Made from your heap of dying ash. Let apes and children praise your art, If their admiration’s to your taste, But you’ll never speak from heart to heart, Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Faust, First Part)
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Every living thing is a masterpiece, written by nature and edited by evolution.
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Neil deGrasse Tyson
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Keep creating: the world yearns to celebrate your next masterpiece.
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Ken Poirot
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Remember death. Even for those who wield great power, life is brief. There is only one way to triumph over death, and that is by making our lives masterpieces. We must seize every opportunity to show kindness and to love fully.
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Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
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Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.
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Pope John Paul II
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The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don't believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life.
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Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
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The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.
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Jean Cocteau (Le Potomak)
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Roses do not bloom hurriedly; for beauty, like any masterpiece, takes time to blossom.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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YOU ARE AN ARTIST OF THE SPIRIT Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art.
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Miguel Ruiz
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Being scared to fail inspires creativity; heartbreak inspires creativity; being hurt by others inspires creativity; being lost inspires creativity. Your masterpiece isn’t something that you will have made in the colorful, it is understood in the darkness. Use the anxiety within and let it serve you.
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Forrest Curran
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These are my masterpieces... my morbid mosaics.
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A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
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You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.
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Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1))
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I become one of those people who walks alone in the dark at night while others sleep or watch Mary Tyler Moore reruns or pull all-nighters to finish up some paper that's due first thing tomorrow. I always carry lots of stuff with me wherever I roam, always weighted down with books, with cassettes, with pens and paper, just in case I get the urge to sit down somewhere, and oh, I don't know, read something or write my masterpiece. I want all my important possessions, my worldly goods, with me at all times. I want to hold what little sense of home I have left with me always.
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Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
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This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
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David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
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I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece.
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Leonard Cohen
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Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.
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Kakuzō Okakura (The Book of Tea)
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A person's birthday should be a special day, a wonderful day, a day of pure celebration for the luck of being born!
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Elise Broach (Masterpiece)
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Every day is a masterpiece, even if it crushes you.
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Simon Van Booy (The Illusion of Separateness)
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The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.
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Michel de Montaigne
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God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves. You were speaking of the Last Judgement. Allow me to laugh respectfully. I shall wait for it resolutely, for I have known what is worse, the judgement of men. For them, no extenuating circumstances; even the good intention is ascribed to crime. Have you at least heard of the spitting cell, which a nation recently thought up to prove itself the greatest on earth? A walled-up box in which the prisoner can stand without moving. The solid door that locks him in the cement shell stops at chin level. Hence only his face is visible, and every passing jailer spits copiously on it. The prisoner, wedged into his cell, cannot wipe his face, though he is allowed, it is true. to close his eyes. Well, that, mon cher, is a human invention. They didn't need God for that little masterpiece.
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Albert Camus (The Fall)
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But you are not finished. You are my masterpiece, Helene Aquilla, but I have just begun. If you survive, you shall be a force to be reckoned with in this world. But first you will be unmade. First, you will be broken.
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Sabaa Tahir (A Torch Against the Night (An Ember in the Ashes, #2))
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The laws of physics is the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece
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Dan Brown (Angels & Demons (Robert Langdon, #1))
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Every masterpiece is just dirt and ash put together in some perfect way.
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Chuck Palahniuk (Diary)
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There is only one way to triumph over death, and that is by making our lives masterpieces.
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Dan Brown (Origin (Robert Langdon, #5))
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Never forget, little mouse: no two people look the same, but we are each beautiful in our own ways. The human body is a masterpiece that deserves our respect. Always.
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Lynette Noni (The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1))
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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return. Learning never exhausts the mind. Art is never finished, only abandoned. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art. It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death. Water is the driving force of all nature.
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Leonardo da Vinci
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Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.
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Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita: Federico Fellini's Masterpiece)
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Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist--a master--and that is what Auguste Rodin was--can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.
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Robert A. Heinlein (Stranger in a Strange Land)
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A true masterpiece does not tell everything.
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Albert Camus (Notebooks 1935-1942)
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We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.
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Rick Yancey (The 5th Wave (The 5th Wave, #1))
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If you paint a masterpiece and then set it on fire, it still would have mattered. If you know you’ve made something beautiful, who cares how long it lasts.
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Micah Nemerever (These Violent Delights)
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I have never met another like you. You are an original masterpiece.
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Jenna Roads (Under a Painted Sky (Spirit Warrior, #1))
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I miss your voice because it is a symphony; your scent because it is a treasure; your smile because it is a jewel; your hug because it is a masterpiece; and your kiss because it is a miracle.
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Matshona Dhliwayo
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The past was but the cemetery of our illusions: one simply stubbed one's toes on the gravestones.
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Γ‰mile Zola (The Masterpiece)
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I challenge you to make your life the masterpiece you want to paint, the novel you want to read, the day you want to wake to.
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Toni Sorenson
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To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery(the media) that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed
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Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History)
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Make each day your masterpiece.
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John Wooden (Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court)
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Watch a French housewife as she makes her way slowly along the loaded stalls… searching for the peak of ripeness and flavor… What you are seeing is a true artist at work, patiently assembling all the materials of her craft, just as the painter squeezes oil colors onto his palette ready to create a masterpiece.
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Keith Floyd
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Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts--your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece.
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Regina Brett
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Sometimes we feel lonely, Like another brick Another wall Like no one needs you at all. Life isn't supposed to be like that, Just think for a while; You’re the brick the wall needs, You're a masterpiece. Open your eyes, And you'll see All the love around you; It was all the time beside you, You were too blind to realize DonΒ΄t you?
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Hareem Ch (Muse Buzz)
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I've become like one of those people I hate, the sort who go to the museum and, instead of looking at the magnificent Brueghel, take a picture of it, reducing it from art to proof. It's not "Look what Brueghel did, painted this masterpiece" but "Look what I did, went to Rotterdam and stood in front of a Brueghel painting!
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David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls: Essays, Etc.)
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He found himself weeping. Not for the future or for the emperor. These were the tears of a man who saw before himself a masterpiece. True art was more than beauty; it was more than technique. It was not just imitation. It was boldness, it was contrast, it was subtlety.
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Brandon Sanderson (The Emperor's Soul (The Cosmere))
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We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should learn to love each other so much to live outside of time... detached.
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Federico Fellini (La Dolce Vita: Federico Fellini's Masterpiece)
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Once upon a time, there was a king who ruled a great and glorious nation. Favourite amongst his subjects was the court painter of whom he was very proud. Everybody agreed this wizzened old man pianted the greatest pictures in the whole kingdom and the king would spend hours each day gazing at them in wonder. However, one day a dirty and dishevelled stranger presented himself at the court claiming that in fact he was the greatest painter in the land. The indignant king decreed a competition would be held between the two artists, confident it would teach the vagabond an embarrassing lesson. Within a month they were both to produce a masterpiece that would out do the other. After thirty days of working feverishly day and night, both artists were ready. They placed their paintings, each hidden by a cloth, on easels in the great hall of the castle. As a large crowd gathered, the king ordered the cloth be pulled first from the court artist’s easel. Everyone gasped as before them was revealed a wonderful oil painting of a table set with a feast. At its centre was an ornate bowl full of exotic fruits glistening moistly in the dawn light. As the crowd gazed admiringly, a sparrow perched high up on the rafters of the hall swooped down and hungrily tried to snatch one of the grapes from the painted bowl only to hit the canvas and fall down dead with shock at the feet of the king. ’Aha!’ exclaimed the king. ’My artist has produced a painting so wonderful it has fooled nature herself, surely you must agree that he is the greatest painter who ever lived!’ But the vagabond said nothing and stared solemnly at his feet. ’Now, pull the blanket from your painting and let us see what you have for us,’ cried the king. But the tramp remained motionless and said nothing. Growing impatient, the king stepped forward and reached out to grab the blanket only to freeze in horror at the last moment. ’You see,’ said the tramp quietly, ’there is no blanket covering the painting. This is actually just a painting of a cloth covering a painting. And whereas your famous artist is content to fool nature, I’ve made the king of the whole country look like a clueless little twat.
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Banksy (Wall and Piece)
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Today, you have the opportunity to transcend from a disempowered mindset of existence to an empowered reality of purpose-driven living. Today is a new day that has been handed to you for shaping. You have the tools, now get out there and create a masterpiece.
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Steve Maraboli (The Power Of One)
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There are no chance encounters with God.
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Kristy Cambron (The Butterfly and the Violin (Hidden Masterpiece, #1))
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I DECLARE I am special and extraordinary. I am not average! I have been custom-made. I am one of a kind. Of all the things God created, what He is the most proud of is me. I am His masterpiece, his most prized possession. I will keep my head held high, knowing I am a child of the most high God, made in his very image. This is my declaration.
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Joel Osteen (I Declare: 31 Promises to Speak Over Your Life)
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Oh, the fools, like a lot of good little schoolboys, scared to death of anything they've been taught is wrong!
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Γ‰mile Zola (The Masterpiece)
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I have every useless thing in the world in my house there. The only thing wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch of open sky like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life, little boy,” he added, turning to me. β€œYou have a soul in you of rare quality, an artist’s nature; never let it starve for lack of what it needs.
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Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time: The Complete Masterpiece)
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An idea is like a play. It needs a good producer and a good promoter even if it is a masterpiece. Otherwise the play may never open; or it may open but, for a lack of an audience, close after a week. Similarly, an idea will not move from the fringes to the mainstream simply because it is good; it must be skillfully marketed before it will actually shift people's perceptions and behavior.
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David Bornstein (How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas)
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Many people say, "Well, I'd love to make a decision like that, but I'm not sure how I could change my life." They're paralyzed by the fear that they don't know exactly how to turn their dreams into reality. And as a result, they never make the decisions that could make their lives into the masterpieces they deserve to be. I'm here to tell you that it's not important initially to know how you're going to create a result. What's important is to decide you will find a way, no matter what.
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Anthony Robbins
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We are, not metaphorically but in very truth, a Divine work of art, something that God is making, and therefore something with which He will not be satisfied until it has a certain character. Here again we come up against what I have called the β€œintolerable compliment.” Over a sketch made idly to amuse a child, an artist may not take much trouble: he may be content to let it go even though it is not exactly as he meant it to be. But over the great picture of his lifeβ€”the work which he loves, though in a different fashion, as intensely as a man loves a woman or a mother a childβ€”he will take endless troubleβ€”and would doubtless, thereby give endless trouble to the picture if it were sentient. One can imagine a sentient picture, after being rubbed and scraped and re-commenced for the tenth time, wishing that it were only a thumb-nail sketch whose making was over in a minute. In the same way, it is natural for us to wish that God had designed for us a less glorious and less arduous destiny; but then we are wishing not for more love but for less.
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C.S. Lewis (The Problem of Pain)
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Look, look,' cried the count, seizing the young man's hands - "look, for on my soul it is curious. Here is a man who had resigned himself to his fate, who was going to the scaffold to die - like a coward, it is true, but he was about to die without resistance. Do you know what gave him strength? - do you know what consoled him? It was, that another partook of his punishment - that another partook of his anguish - that another was to die before him. Lead two sheep to the butcher's, two oxen to the slaughterhouse, and make one of them understand that his companion will not die; the sheep will bleat for pleasure, the ox will bellow with joy. But man - man, who God created in his own image - man, upon whom God has laid his first, his sole commandment, to love his neighbour - man, to whom God has given a voice to express his thoughts - what is his first cry when he hears his fellowman is saved? A blasphemy. Honour to man, this masterpiece of nature, this king of the creation!
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Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
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Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
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David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
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From the moment I start a new novel, life’s just one endless torture. The first few chapters may go fairly well and I may feel there’s still a chance to prove my worth, but that feeling soon disappears and every day I feel less and less satisfied. I begin to say the book’s no good, far inferior to my earlier ones, until I’ve wrung torture out of every page, every sentence, every word, and the very commas begin to look excruciatingly ugly. Then, when it’s finished, what a relief! Not the blissful delight of the gentleman who goes into ecstasies over his own production, but the resentful relief of a porter dropping a burden that’s nearly broken his back . . . Then it starts all over again, and it’ll go on starting all over again till it grinds the life out of me, and I shall end my days furious with myself for lacking talent, for not leaving behind a more finished work, a bigger pile of books, and lie on my death-bed filled with awful doubts about the task I’ve done, wondering whether it was as it ought to have been, whether I ought not to have done this or that, expressing my last dying breath the wish that I might do it all over again!
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Γ‰mile Zola (The Masterpiece)
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Today, Creator of the Universe, we ask that you open our heart and openour eyes so we can enjoy all of your creations and live in eternal lovewith you. Help us to see you in everything we perceive with our eyes,with our ears, with our heart, with all our senses. Let us perceivewith eyes of love so that we find you wherever we go and see you ineverything you create. Let us see you in every cell of our body, inevery emotion of our mind, in every dream, in every flower, in everyperson we meet. You cannot hide from us because you are everywhere, andwe are one with you. Let us be aware of this truth. Let us be aware ofour power to create a dream of heaven where everything is possible.Help us to use our imagination to guide the dream of our life, themagic of our creation, so we can live without fear, without anger,without jealousy, without envy. Give us a light to follow, and lettoday be the day that our search for love and happiness is over. Todaylet something extraordinary happen that will change our life forever:Let everything we do and say be an expression of the beauty in ourheart, always based on love. Help us to be the way you are, to love the way you love, to share the way you share, to create a masterpiece ofbeauty and love, the same way that all of your creations aremasterpieces of beauty and love. Beginning today and gradually overtime, help us to increase the power of our love so that we may create amasterpiece of art - our own life. Today, Creator, we give you all ofour gratitude and love because you have given us Life. Amen.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book)
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In this course I have tried to reveal the mechanism of those wonderful toys β€” literary masterpieces. I have tried to make of you good readers who read books not for the infantile purpose of identifying oneself with the characters, and not for the adolescent purpose of learning to live, and not for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations. I have tried to teach you to read books for the sake of their form, their visions, their art. I have tried to teach you to feel a shiver of artistic satisfaction, to share not the emotions of the people in the book but the emotions of its author β€” the joys and difficulties of creation. We did not talk around books, about books; we went to the center of this or that masterpiece, to the live heart of the matter.
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Vladimir Nabokov (Lectures on Literature)
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Whirrun ignored β€˜em. β€˜Then, when I’ve got two cut,’ and he dropped a pale slab of cheese on one slice then slapped the other on top like he was catching a fly, β€˜I trap the cheese between then, and there you have it!’ β€˜Bread and cheese.’ Yon weighed the half-loaf in one hand and the cheese in the other. β€˜Just the same as I’ve got.’ And he bit off the cheese and tossed it to Scorry. Whirrun sighed. β€˜Have none of you no vision?’ He held up his masterpiece to such light as there was, which was almost none. β€˜This is no more bread and cheese than a fine axe is wood and iron, or a live person is meat and har.’ β€˜What is it, then?’ asked Drfod, rocking back from his wet wood and tossing the flint aside in disgust. β€˜A whole new thing. A forging of the humble part of bread and cheese into a greater whole. I call it … a cheese-trap.’ Whirrun took a dainty nibble from one corner. β€˜Oh, yes, my friends. This tastes like … progress…
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Joe Abercrombie (The Heroes)
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this is not a Quote it's a poem. "A Thousand Kisses Deep" The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it’s done – Your little winning streak. And summoned now to deal With your invincible defeat, You live your life as if it’s real, A Thousand Kisses Deep. I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed, I’m back on Boogie Street. You lose your grip, and then you slip Into the Masterpiece. And maybe I had miles to drive, And promises to keep: You ditch it all to stay alive, A Thousand Kisses Deep. And sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go, A Thousand Kisses Deep. Confined to sex, we pressed against The limits of the sea: I saw there were no oceans left For scavengers like me. I made it to the forward deck. I blessed our remnant fleet – And then consented to be wrecked, A Thousand Kisses Deep. I’m turning tricks, I’m getting fixed, I’m back on Boogie Street. I guess they won’t exchange the gifts That you were meant to keep. And quiet is the thought of you, The file on you complete, Except what we forgot to do, A Thousand Kisses Deep. And sometimes when the night is slow, The wretched and the meek, We gather up our hearts and go, A Thousand Kisses Deep. The ponies run, the girls are young, The odds are there to beat . . .
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Leonard Cohen
β€œ
but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? why when Marilyn had killed her baby? why when Marilyn had killed her babies? why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else
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Joyce Carol Oates (Blonde)