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Yes, best friend of mine. I am the famous photographer you've admired for years, and the man who's admired you.
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Kelly Moran (Exposure)
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A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas...to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time. I just want to say..."Hello. We can hear you. The words survived.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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You can’t meet your heroes—because they are, in the end, just an idea, that lives inside you.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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The most reliable topic for small talk is the goings-on of stars whether they’re rising or falling, and whether nor not a particular story is truth or fiction. This is way out of balance. It invades the privacy of men and women who didn’t give up being human when they became famous, and it negates the meaning inherent in our own lives. (300)
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Victoria Moran (Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit)
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I hate stories where the conclusion is that women just have to suffer and get stronger,” Julia said. “Those are the worst stories.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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He’s not a person—he’s a place you travel to. Everything changes when you’re with him. He is the mayor of good times. I remember a quote I read: “It was no man you wanted, believe me—it was a world.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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think about how brave it is, to do this: to queue up, and meet your hero. There’s something incredibly intimate about reading, or listening, or looking at someone else’s art. When it truly moves you—when you whoop when Prince whoops in Purple Rain; or cry when Bastian cries in The NeverEnding Story, it is as if you have been them, for a while. You traveled inside them, in their shoes, breathing their breath. Moving with their pulse. A faint ghost of them imprinted, inside you, forever—it responds when you meet them, as if it recognizes its own reflection.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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This is what happens, when it feels like the weight of the world is crushing right down on you. You fear it’s going to change you forever. And you’re right. It is. It’s going to turn you into something that is both beautiful, and the most indestructible thing on the planet. I am both touched, and amused, by how apt its name is: Hope. “I relate to you,” I say to the Hope Diamond, as I stand there, staring at it. “I get what you are saying. You are the sparkliest metaphor I have ever seen.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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...my old life was over, and I know - as I had always suspected - that kissing John Kite is the greatest luxury there is.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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First class is a simple visual representation of who has all the money in the world: guys who look like this.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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Because the secret of everyone who comes to London—who comes to any big city—is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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You don’t live in London. You play London - to win. That’s why we’re all here. It is a city full of contestants, each chasing one of a million possible prizes: wealth, love, fame. Inspiration.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas... to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time I just want to say - "Hello. We can hear you. The words survived.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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This is what happens, when it feels like the weight of the world is crushing right down on you. Your fear it's going to change you forever. And you're right. It is. It's going to turn you into something that's both beautiful, and the most indestructible thing on the planet.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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How amazing to go to a gig thinking of nothing but how loud you will shout; how hard you will dance; how much you will sweat; how tightly you will hug your friends, as your favourite song plays. How amazing to react to music in the way music wants you - to become an ecstatic animal.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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But that is all part of becoming an adult. That is the difference between girls and women. That they are finally ready to hear the secret of what makes them them. That they are strong enough - for good, or for ill - to ask someone what is, unexpectedly, the most terrifying, revelatory question, on Earth; one you have to be brave, and ready, to hear: "Why do you love me?
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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You are the new religion. You are the new craze. You are the next stage in evolution. You are so palpably my superior, in every way, that I tremble like a child in your presence. You make my head spin. You make my heart burst. You make my soul explode, every fucking minute I am with you. What I am inescapably heading towards is , in this monologue, which might be the last thing I ever say, is: Dutch, I'm in love with you."
His face was as open and wondering as a child, looking at snow.
"I love you, Jo.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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There is one terrible weakness you can have if you amusedly and self-deprecatingly describe yourself as an artist and become famous. One letdown if you become loved by millions and your work is meaningful work and that is if some of the millions that know you and love you are teenage girls. There is nothing more shaming than to be loved by teenage girls. The love of teenage girls is not merely substandard or worthless it is an active mortification to an artist. Our language is full of how little we think of artists that are loved by teenage girls, we talk of mad fans and teenyboppers and little girls wetting their knickers. Ohh, you can take those girls' money and become elevated on their devotion and enjoy them putting you at number one. You can do all those things, no band ever refused them but you do not respect those girls, you do not want to talk to them or look them in the eye, or hang out with them or love them back. You do not talk about them unless it is to turn to your cool fans, the men, and mouth "Sorry, these mad girls have crushed the party. So embarrassing!" (...)Men are the right fans to have. This is why rock is cooler than pop, acid house is cooler than disco, prog is cooler than boy bands. Things boys love are cooler than things girls love. That is a simple fact. Boys love clever things cleverly, girls love foolish things foolishly. How awful it would be love bands like teenage girls do? How awful it would be to be the wrong kind of fan? A girl. How awful it would be to be a dumb, hysterical, screaming teenage girl? How amazing it is to be a dumb, hysterical, screaming teenage girl? ...
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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Traditional feminism would tell you that we should concentrate on the big stuff like pay inequality, female circumcision in the Third World, and domestic abuse. And they are, obviously, pressing and disgusting and wrong, and the world cannot look itself squarely in the eye until they're stopped. But all those littler, stupider, more obvious day-to-day problems with being a woman are, in many ways, just as deleterious to women's peace of mind. It is the "Broken Windows" philosophy, transferred to female inequality. In the Broken Windows theory, if a single broken window on an empty building is ignored and not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may break into the building and light fires, or become squatters. Similarly, if we live in a climate where female pubic hair is considered distasteful, or famous and powerful women are constantly pilloried for being too fat or too thin, or badly dressed, then, eventually, people start breaking into women, and lighting fires in them. Women will get squatters. Clearly, this is not a welcome state of affairs.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
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And - just as with winning the lottery, or becoming famous - there is no manual for becoming a woman, even though the stakes are so high. God knows, when I was 13, I tried to find one. You can read about other people's experience on the matter - by way of trying to crib, in advance, for an exam - but I found that this is, in itself, problematic. For throughout history, you can read stories of women who - against all odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed. Your hard-won triumphs can be wholly negated if you live in a climate where your victories are seen as threatening, incorrect, distasteful, or - most crucially of all, for a teenage girl - simply uncool. Few girls would choose to be right - right, down into their clever, brilliant bones - but lonely.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
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And so part of the declaring of love means you are working to a commission, now. You are not the sole architect of the person you are building. Someone else is looking over your blueprints--nodding, enthusiastically,over this turret--so you build the turret bigger! and remaining tactfully silent over an ostentatious fountain, which you immediately and silently scrap. You have entered a new world--in which there are two opinions on what will make the very best you.
And if your partner is wise, and kind, and has the same taste as you, you will make amazing things together.
And if your partner is broken, or impatient, or has darker needs--is unknowingly trying to build you in the shape of another woman he once knew, and lost; is trying to lean into your foundations to make his own stronger--you will make something with rotten walls, and impossible angles, which will, one day in the future, collapse.
But that is all part of becoming an adult. That is the difference between girls and women. That they are finally ready to hear the secret of what makes them them,. That they are strong enough--for good, or for ill--to ask someone what is, unexpectedly,the most terrifying, relevatory question, on Earth; one you have to be brave, and ready, to hear: "Why do you love me?
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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I like the blue one too, baby" he said, companionably.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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The idea of simply trotting around the world with John, for a year or more, is obviously, what Willy Wonka would have put in a special chocolate bar for me.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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A book is a beautiful, paper mausoleum, or tomb, in which to store ideas... to keep the bones of your thoughts in one place, for all time. I just want to say - "Hello. We can hear you. The words survived.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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We are Henceforth-mongers, trying to make our Henceforth the most enticing. Because the secret of everyone who comes to London - who comes to any big city - is that they came here because they did not feel normal, back at home. The only way they will ever feel normal is if they hijack popular culture with their weirdness... and make the rest of the world suddenly wish to become as weird as them.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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Becoming a woman felt a bit like becoming famous. For, from being benevolently generally ignored – the base-line existence of most children – a teenage girl is suddenly fascinating to others, and gets bombarded with questions: What size are you? Have you done it yet? Will you have sex with me? Have you got ID? Do you want to try a puff of this? Are you seeing anyone? Have you got protection? What’s your signature style? Can you walk in heels? Who are your heroes? Are you getting a Brazilian? What porn do you like? Do you want to get married? When are you going to have kids? Are you a feminist? Were you just flirting with that man? What do you want to do? WHO ARE YOU?
All ridiculous questions to ask of a 13-year-old simply because she now needs a bra. They might as well have been asking my dog. I had absolutely no idea.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
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The 1990s are a bad time to be poor and not-famous.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Build a Girl)
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Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious than singed trousers; the word backdraught clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and – foom! a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath, as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light.
No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in Police Academy; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel. These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’ O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.
As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for this expertise, or you could even call it lore – wait, come back!
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Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
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as with winning the lottery, or becoming famous—there is no manual for becoming a woman,
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Caitlin Moran (How To Be A Woman)
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nobody was ever convicted for the “Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre,” the most famous gangland hit in American history. That said, Capone’s involvement is unquestioned, and it is widely believed that the 4 gunmen were McGurn, John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, and Frank Rio, the bodyguard who had saved Capone from Moran’s assassination attempt in 1926.
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Charles River Editors (The Prohibition Era in the United States: The History and Legacy of America’s Ban on Alcohol and Its Repeal)
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Among connoisseurs of chocolate, Cioccolata Savoia was famous. From Torino to Amalfi, experts lauded the family's legendary chocolatiers for fusing the smooth, delicate flavor of Criollo chocolate with Sorrentino and Amalfitano lemons.
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Jan Moran (The Chocolatier)
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What other people think is none of your business,
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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We going to the aftershow?’ Krissi wobbles slightly, under the impact of so much booze. ‘But they’re collections of the worst people on God’s earth, herded into a mosh pit of cuntery, all blahing on about how brilliant they are,’ I tell him.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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can claim all drinks ‘on expenses’. This is one of many odd things about my life. I can get drunk for free – indeed, I travel around the world for free, interviewing bands – but I cannot afford new clothes, or ‘stuff’, or a flat bigger than a medium-sized shed. I live a life in which luxuries are essentials, but practical things unaffordable. It lends an odd perspective. I essentially lead the life of a globe-trotting, drunken, yet bankrupt playboy.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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We’ve mutually enthused about Julian Cope – ‘Oh my word, “Safesurfer”!’ – and Jerry’s tried to tell me I should like Slint, which I am resistant to, as, to me, they sound like people who are deliberately making horrible music that make their mums sad. ‘The album’s called Spiderland,’ I say. ‘Spiderland would be the worst possible place you could find up the Faraway Tree.’ And Jerry laughs! I’ve made a famous comedian laugh!
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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Everyone else I knew—my dad, John Kite, me—laid out the entire buffet of their personality straightaway; as if we had pork pies and cakes stapled to our chests. Zee, it seems, only brought it out if someone actually said they were hungry.
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Caitlin Moran (How to Be Famous)
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Quiero hacer que pasen cosas.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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No tengo ninguna duda de que hay mensajes secretos en todos los libros, solo hay que buscarlos.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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Pero yo creo que el arte consiste en lograr que alguien se enamore de ti.
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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Still, life goes on, doesn't it? It really always does. It keeps bloody going on. I mean it in a good way, of course. However much you fuck things up, life just keeps going on, washing you downriver - even if you're just floating there, like a listless dead thing, making no effort, mouthing, 'Oh God, oh God', face down underneath the water. The current bears you on until, soon, the awful events are just tiny specks, left far behind you...
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Caitlin Moran (How to be Famous (How to Build a Girl, #2))
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I first discovered Ryan Daniel Moran when I saw his now-famous t-shirt in a viral video on Facebook. It read: Democrat Republican ENTREPRENEUR
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Ryan Daniel Moran (12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur)
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Author and trainer Craig Ballantyne famously said, “Success is simple once you accept how hard it is.
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Ryan Daniel Moran (12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur)