I've always associated the moment of writing with a moment of lift, of joy, of unexpected reward.


Seamus Heaney

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To move forward one has to get stated.If not yet stated,never lament.Past is history. Seize the wond...
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It sounds like I'm already dead, I just don't know it yet.
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Mindfulness is observing the beauty of every moment unfolding before us.
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Stupidity is also a gift of God, but one mustn't misuse it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Humanity should question itself, once more, about the absurd and always unfair phenomenon of war, on...
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Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry a...
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Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore... prove ultimate...
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I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly moth...
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The vow of celibacy is a matter of keeping one's word to Christ and the Church. a duty and a pro...
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From now on it is only through a conscious choice and through a deliberate policy that humanity can ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Love is never defeated, and I could add, the history of Ireland proves it.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and ...
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Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, on...
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Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressi...
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The historical experience of socialist countries has sadly demonstrated that collectivism does not d...
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To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the...
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Young people are threatened... by the evil use of advertising techniques that stimulate the natural ...
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When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law e...
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You will reciprocally promise love, loyalty and matrimonial honesty. We only want for you this day t...
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The future starts today, not tomorrow.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
The unworthy successor of Peter who desires to benefit from the immeasurable wealth of Christ feels ...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Social justice cannot be attained by violence. Violence kills what it intends to create.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Marriage is an act of will that signifies and involves a mutual gift, which unites the spouses and b...
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The United Nations organization has proclaimed 1979 as the Year of the Child. Are the children to re...
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Violence and arms can never resolve the problems of men.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, ther...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
There are people and nations, Mother, that I would like to say to you by name. I entrust them to you...
POPE JOHN PAUL II
I have a sweet tooth for song and music. This is my Polish sin.
POPE JOHN PAUL II
Pause & Remember- If you empty yourself of yesterday's sorrows, you will have much more room for...
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The scars of others should teach us caution.
ST. JEROME
They talk like angels but they live like men.
ST. JEROME
Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, in the soul in which this virtue does not...
SAINT AUGUSTINE
The most High approveth not the gifts of the wicked.
SAINT PATRICK
I see that already in this present world I am exalted above measure by the Lord. And I was not worth...
SAINT PATRICK
He that offereth sacrifice of the goods of the poor is as one that sacrificeth the son in the presen...
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I was freeborn according to the flesh; I am born of a father who was a decurion, but I sold my noble...
SAINT PATRICK
I have had the good fortune through my God that I should never abandon his people whom I have acquir...
SAINT PATRICK
The Lord discovered to me a sense of my unbelief that, though late, I should remember my transgressi...
SAINT PATRICK
Let who will scoff and revile - I will not remain silent; neither will I conceal the signs and wonde...
SAINT PATRICK
I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, bec...
SAINT PATRICK
I have a Creator who knew all things, even before they were made - even me, his poor little child.
SAINT PATRICK
I have vowed to my God to teach the heathen, though I be despised by some.
SAINT PATRICK
No one should ever say that it was my ignorance if I did or showed forth anything however small acco...
SAINT PATRICK
The Lord opened the understanding of my unbelieving heart, so that I should recall my sins.
SAINT PATRICK
It was not any grace in me, but God that put this earnest care into my heart, that I should be one o...
SAINT PATRICK
Sufficient for me is that honour which is not seen of men but is felt in the heart, as faithful is H...
SAINT PATRICK
Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came and in h...
SAINT PATRICK
I am Patrick, a sinner, most uncultivated and least of all the faithful and despised in the eyes of ...
SAINT PATRICK
The Lord is greater than all: I have said enough.
SAINT PATRICK
Among the many signs of a lively faith and hope we have in eternal life, one of the surest is not be...
SAINT IGNATIUS
I can love a person in this life only insofar as he tries to advance in the praise and service of Go...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Some indeed have tears naturally, when the higher motion of the soul makes itself felt in the lower,...
SAINT IGNATIUS
The principal end both of my father and of myself in the conquest of India... has been the propagati...
SAINT IGNATIUS
We should love the body insofar as it is obedient and helpful to the soul, since the soul, with the ...
SAINT IGNATIUS
We should always be disposed to believe that that which appears white is really black, if the hierar...
SAINT IGNATIUS
It is one thing to be eloquent and charming in profane speech, and another when the one speaking as ...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Remember that bodily exercise, when it is well ordered, as I have said, is also prayer by means of w...
SAINT IGNATIUS
In the light of the Divine Goodness, it seems to me, though others may think differently, that ingra...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Occupy yourself in beholding and bewailing your own imperfections rather than contemplating the impe...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Be generous to the poor orphans and those in need. The man to whom our Lord has been liberal ought n...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Teach us to give and not to count the cost.
SAINT IGNATIUS
In the fallen there is danger of pride and vainglory, since they prefer their own judgment to the ju...
SAINT IGNATIUS
May God our Lord never let me harm anyone when I cannot help him!
SAINT IGNATIUS
True, I am in love with suffering, but I do not know if I deserve the honor.
SAINT IGNATIUS
May the perfect grace and eternal love of Christ our Lord be our never-failing protection and help.
SAINT IGNATIUS
For those who love, nothing is too difficult, especially when it is done for the love of our Lord Je...
SAINT IGNATIUS
If God has given you the world's goods in abundance, it is to help you gain those of Heaven and ...
SAINT IGNATIUS
Knowledge is sometimes superfluous: when we need it, we have it not.
SAINT BERNARD
For every benefit conferred, God is to be praised in his gifts. Otherwise when the time of judgment ...
SAINT BERNARD
Custom turns everything upside down. Give it time, and what can resist its hardening effect? What do...
SAINT BERNARD
Charity never lacks what is her own, all that she needs for her own security. Not alone does she hav...
SAINT BERNARD
I was made a sinner by deriving my being from Adam; I am made just by being washed in the blood of C...
SAINT BERNARD
The impudence of the sinner displeases God as much as the modesty of the penitent gives him pleasure...
SAINT BERNARD
A man who prides himself on being better than his fellow-men thinks it a disgrace if he does not do ...
SAINT BERNARD
Keep to the middle if you wish to keep moderation. The mid way is the safe way. Moderation abides in...
SAINT BERNARD
Humility is a good estate; founded thereon, the whole spiritual edifice grows into a holy temple in ...
SAINT BERNARD
That heart alone is hard which does not shudder at itself for not feeling its hardness.
SAINT BERNARD
There are people who go clad in tunics and have nothing to do with furs, who nevertheless are lackin...
SAINT BERNARD
You wish me to tell you why and how God should be loved. My answer is that God himself is the reason...
SAINT BERNARD
I myself, however wretched I may be, have been occasionally privileged to sit at the feet of the Lor...
SAINT BERNARD
Learn the lesson that, if you are to do the work of a prophet, what you want is not a sceptre, but a...
SAINT BERNARD
Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong...
SAINT BERNARD
In truth, opinion may be taken for understanding; understanding cannot be taken for opinion. How so?...
SAINT BERNARD
Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be an endless preoccupation. You must dwell al...
SAINT BERNARD
God removes the sin of the one who makes humble confession, and thereby the devil loses the sovereig...
SAINT BERNARD
We seek for truth in ourselves; in our neighbours, and in its essential nature. We find it first in ...
SAINT BERNARD
I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind.
SAINT BERNARD
Among irrational animals the love of the offspring and of the parents for each other is extraordinar...
SAINT BASIL
The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enqu...
SAINT BASIL
There is nothing unpremeditated, nothing neglected by God. His unsleeping eye beholds all things.
SAINT BASIL
We glorify the Holy Ghost together with the Father and the Son, from the conviction that He is not s...
SAINT BASIL
We do not accost a physician as we do any mere nobody; nor a magistrate as we do a private individua...
SAINT BASIL
Indulging in unrestrained and immoderate laughter is a sign of intemperance, of a want of control ov...
SAINT BASIL
Strive to attain to the greater virtues, but do not neglect the lesser ones. Do not make light of a ...
SAINT BASIL
To lovers of the truth, nothing can be put before God and hope in Him.
SAINT BASIL
Do not despise the fish because they are absolutely unable to speak or to reason, but fear lest you ...
SAINT BASIL

More Seamus Heaney

Anyone born and bred in Northern Ireland can't be too optimistic.
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words...To lure the tribal shoals to epigram / And order.
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Every time you read a poem aloud to yourself in the presence of others, you are reading it into your...
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The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpec...
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Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it o...
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One of the best descriptions of the type of writer I am was given by Tom Paulin, who described himse...
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Nowadays, what an award gives is a sense of solidarity with the poetry guild, as it were: sustenance...
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The fact of the matter is that the most unexpected and miraculous thing in my life was the arrival i...
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The problem as you get older... is that you become more self-aware. At the same time, you have to su...
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The Heaneys were aristocrats, in the sense that they took for granted a code of behavior that was gi...
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My father was a creature of the archaic world, really. He would have been entirely at home in a Gael...
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I've said it before about the Nobel Prize: it's like being struck by a more or less benign a...
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In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.
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I don't think my intelligence is naturally analytic or political.
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Even if the hopes you started out with are dashed, hope has to be maintained.
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Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a pea...
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A public expectation, it has to be said, not of poetry as such but of political positions variously ...
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Then as the years went on and my listening became more deliberate, I would climb up on an arm of our...
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Dylan Thomas is now as much a case history as a chapter in the history of poetry.
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If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way.
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In the United States, in poetry workshops, it's now quite a thing to make graduate students lear...
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The faking of feelings is a sin against the imagination.
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If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.
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If you go into an underground train in London - probably anywhere, but chiefly in London - there'...
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I have always thought of poems as stepping stones in one's own sense of oneself. Every now and a...
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Eternal life can mean utter reverence for life itself.
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The amount of sensory material stored up or stored down in the brain's and the body's system...
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But that citizen's perception was also at one with the truth in recognizing that the very brutal...
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I'm not personally obsessed with death. At a certain age, the light that you live in is inhabite...
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Without needing to be theoretically instructed, consciousness quickly realizes that it is the site o...
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No place in the world prides itself more on its vigilance and realism, no place considers itself mor...
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Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.
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In fact, in lyric poetry, truthfulness becomes recognizable as a ring of truth within the medium its...
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The external reality and inner dynamic of happenings in Northern Ireland between 1968 and 1974 were ...
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I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow beh...
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The next move is always the test.
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It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir;...
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Getting started, keeping going, getting started again - in art and in life, it seems to me this is t...
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Yet there are times when a deeper need enters, when we want the poem to be not only pleasurably righ...
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I think of Dermot Healy as the heir to Patrick Kavanagh.
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I suppose you could say my father's world was Thomas Hardy and my mother's D.H. Lawrence.
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In my early teens, I acquired a kind of representative status: went on behalf of the family to wakes...
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Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure
The bastion of sensation. Do not waver
Into langu...
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As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of...
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But the thing uttered by the speaker I strain towards is still not quite the story of what is going ...
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Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
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The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don't have the reso...
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I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center.
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In off the moors, down through the mist beams, god-cursed Grendel came greedily loping.
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The kind of poet who founds and reconstitutes values is somebody like Yeats or Whitman - these are p...
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Yeats was 18th-century oratory, almost.
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In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.
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All I know is a door into the dark
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Behaviour that's admired
is the path to power among people everywhere.
SEAMUS HEANEY
The experiment of poetry, as far as I am concerned, happens when the poem carries you beyond where y...
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To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in ther...
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You yourself don't have to be shaken by mortal danger in order to feel your mortality.
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Sonnet is about movement in a form.
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I always had a superstitious fear of setting up a too well-designed writing place and then finding t...
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When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit...
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Poems that come swiftly are usually the ones that you keep.
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Poetry is more a threshold than a path.
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Since I was a schoolboy, I've been used to being recognized on the road by old and young, and be...
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I would say that something important for me and for my generation in Northern Ireland was the 1947 E...
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Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what's said and what's do...
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Unless we constantly replenish our supply of calcium, drop by drop, our bones become thinner from de...
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[WHAT IT DOES: With 99 percent of the body's calcium stored in the skeleton and teeth, the main role...
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It's a marvelous campaign, but it didn't increase milk consumption.
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The artifacts are ... the treasures of Peru's most famous pre-Colombian city. On the other hand, Yal...
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Bones are meant to sustain work. If you don't work and exercise and put some stress on the bones, yo...
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My eyebrows - they have a life of their own. I don't arch them on purpose; I don't do, like,...
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My eyebrows - they have a life of their own. I don't arch them on purpose; I don't do, like,...
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My wife Juliana and I first saw Eurovision while on our honeymoon in Greece in 2006, and we were ama...
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He's got an out-clause to go overseas, but I'm probably 90 per cent sure that Motts would be staying...
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Mobile entertainment is, without a doubt, the future of the phone. In December, 56 million mobile su...
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You have to give the Rampage a lot of credit. Their game plan was to put the puck on net and keep it...
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The closed carrier portals and the limited interfaces make it difficult for new brands to break in. ...
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When you look at the enabling technologies for live voice, most consumers have speakers, many have a...
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Better a bald head than no head at all
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Let me describe it as a momentous meeting. It was a good, workman-like meeting.
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It doesn't provide any compelling advantage for consumers. We don't see it playing a role on the con...
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If you can't imagine female torch singers and Skrillex-style demon techno onstage at the same mo...
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I used to love stage above all, but that was when I was a single man. As I get older, the time commi...
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The undersea world surrounding Green Island looks just like a water fairyland.
MEHGAN HEANEY-GRIER