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Book: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
Quotes of Book: CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
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  1. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    Lightning strikes the slaughterhouse flagpole and the antelope scatter like minnows as the rain begins to fall, and finally, having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels, saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go.
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  2. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there's a God above this subGod who's busy for a few God minutes with something else, and will be right back; and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say: Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn't he humble enough? Didn't he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren't the simplest tasks hard? Didn't you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream? And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms, saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem.
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  3. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    I would have done anything to stop the hitting. Anything. So much for human dignity, I think, a few whacks in the ribs and you're calling a fat guy God and eating soil at his request.
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  4. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    I have a sense that God is unfair and preferentially punishes his weak, his dumb, his fat, his lazy. I believe he takes more pleasure in his perfect creatures, and cheers them on like a brainless dad as they run roughshod over the rest of us. He gives us a need for love, and no way to get any. He gives us a desire to be liked, and personal attributes that make us utterly un-likable. Having placed his flawed and needy children in a world of exacting specifications, he deducts the difference between
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  5. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    All night I have bad dreams about severed hands. In one I'm eating chili and a hand comes out of my bowl and gives me the thumbs-down. I
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  6. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    What a degraded cosmos. What a case of something starting out nice and going bad.
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  7. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    I'm bleeding at the knees and choking from smoke and have no idea who these people are or where I'm going, but at least I'm off the hook in terms of the hand jobs.
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  8. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    ...and finally, having lost what was to be lost, my torn and black heart rebels saying enough already, enough, this is as low as I go
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  9. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    I say it must have been great to grow up when men were men. He says men have always been what the are now, namely incapable of coping with life without the intervention of God the Almighty. Then in the oven behind him my pizza starts smoking and he says case in point.
    book-quotemenpizza

  10. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    That's what a book is: a failed attempt that, its failure notwithstanding, is sincere and hard-worked and expunged of as much falseness as he could manage, given his limited abilities, and has thus been imbued with a sort of purity.
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  11. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    In spite of the strife the stars were bright as crystal.
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  12. George Saunders _ CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

    The work that stirs the greatest passion is also the work that creates around it the greatest silence, the strongest imperative to stand back and admire and let others admire, without interfering.
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