blake butler @blakebutler Twitter profile

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blake butler

6 months

My memoir "Molly" is officially on sale today Thank you to the countless people who have supported me through the very strange process of publishing this book; i couldn't have done it alone Thank you for reading & sharing

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

If i have failed to respond or communicate with you in a timely manner, please know that i am trying very hard to be a person

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

The day she died molly sent me a small book of poems she’d been writing over the last two months. It is called Folk Physics. This is the first poem from that

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blake butler

@blakebutler

5 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

Should i get "bush did 9/11" tattooed on my balls or as a trampstamp

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

Everyone at my gym died I go in & lift weights by myself It's chill They did a good job while they were alive They had bodies They worked on their bodies I don't miss them The guy who always chewed on his shirt while he was running i miss the least In the future i'll die2

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

Everything you write has taken your entire life to write

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Some of you never died in a forest fire wearing your mother's wedding gown and it shows

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

The New York Times obit for Molly. Still doesn’t seem real. I love you and miss you so much. And I am learning to find you within me

Molly Brodak, Poet and Memoirist of Her Father’s Crimes, Dies at 39 (Published 2020)

Her father robbed 11 banks in and around Detroit when she was a teenager to pay off debts. But his sprees were just the jumping off point for her unsparing memoir.

www.nytimes.com

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

Everybody thinks they are one of the good guys

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 years

How marketable is your trauma? Have you found a way to make it fit squeaky clean into redemption? Can you make your life seem livable enough for others to want to click on, maybe even relate to? How long can you hold your breath?

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

Birth announcements seem like onion articles now

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blake butler

@blakebutler

8 years

If i can't fuck openly in the aisles of walmart i don't want to fuck

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blake butler

@blakebutler

5 years

The 4 stages of life Birth Infancy Fyre Fest Death

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

The Paris Review has published an excerpt from my forthcoming memoir, Molly; this section in particular taken from the opening which describes my experience of the day she died. I had to deliberate whether I wanted this online and I decided I did. Please read with care.

The Paris Review

@parisreview

1 year

“I tried to take a knee and instead fell on all fours, no longer screaming but just wailing, for her, for Mom, for God … as meanwhile the white-hot silent sun above us burned, an open all-unseeing eye.” Read an excerpt from Molly by @blakebutler .

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

I never thought I should go to therapy in part cuz I thought I could logic my way thru anything & part cuz I won’t pretend to not have imagined keeping my pain locked in helped me to write. After 6mo-ish of therapy I am now writing w more clarity & precision than ever in my life

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

Some news, long in the making, for which i'm grateful to many & a little terrified. Coming next fall.

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

The forces that killed my father, mother, and wife were all things their healthcare would not cover. Mental illness. “You got the wrong disease,” they said. “Out of pocket.”

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Molly was my universe, my glow. The smartest and most deeply feeling person I’ve ever known. What kind of world fails this person. It’s not a fair question but it’s not a question

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

My next book, Molly, has a cover and is now available for preorder at link below November 21, 2023 from @archwayeditions With extreme love

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

What's next, tearing down a statue of george washington? Thomas jefferson? yes yes

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Thank you for this outpouring. It’s keeping me alive. I wish molly could have seen it. She had no idea. She refused to. Her strength of will refused to. And finally it caved in on her. Yet her relentless will was also part of what made her the most magical of people. Why

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Can't really remember how it got here or who i was once but today Alice Knott exists. Thanks for trying, anybody. & thanks above all to @CalMorgan & @riverheadbooks for the faith. Please support independent booksellers.

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

When writers say “I spent ten years writing that book” they mean “I’m an alcoholic”

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

My partner Molly Brodak passed away yesterday. I don’t know how else to tell it

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

One year

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

There has never been a phone booth on this corner before tonight

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 years

"Library" by Molly Brodak

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Since dr phil is trending, here's a photo of the time molly and i dropped acid and went to a live taping of his show. Molly said her closest equivalent experience was her visit to auschwitz the previous summer

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

You all are keeping me alive. Thank you. Even in the human hell we aren’t alone. Is this me talking? I’m finding out. I miss you molly. Everyone loved you and you never knew. Bless you sweet love.

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 years

Asked megan to marry me almost immediately after we met, and now the future is the present ♥♥♥♥

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

May delete this but had a spiritual experience yesterday evening in which i felt i spoke with the dead. Basic information

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blake butler

@blakebutler

10 years

you don't "have haters" you're just annoying

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

A new issue of the Volta () is live now, w/ an "In Memoriam" feature on Molly Brodak, including 20 unpublished poems across her last 10 yrs, & beautiful remembrances by @nicksturm , @carrielorig , @ginamyers , @carolinecrew , & myself -

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blake butler

@blakebutler

9 years

What if you never took a picture of anything again

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

The last photo i ever took of molly

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 years

Molly Brodak would've turned 42 today. In her memory, we're excited to announce the launch of Glass Orchid, a nonprofit focused on providing $ & resources to working artists of merit & need. An announcement vid is live at & our 1st grant coming soon. TY!

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Have never seen a rainbow inside our house before. Came after i had just finished texting her phone asking questions. It disappeared shortly after i photographed it. I’m telling you for a reason

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

2 months today. Stunned by this self-portrait she made right before we met

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

My mom thought she couldn’t write a poem so I helped her dictate one. She’s been talking about poetry nonstop since we finished it

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Another poem, "Library," from Molly Brodak's final manuscript

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 months

I have the right to tell my story. I learned that from Molly. The story I tell in "Molly" is mine. You don't have a right to a word. You know zero except what you see on this embarrassing website. Trying to alter my story with your harebrained gaze is assault. How dare you. Sick.

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

I want to say thank you to everyone who has been reaching out in so many different ways for me during what has felt like an unsurvivable and impossible phase of life. The longest day that still won't stop. I have nothing left but how i'm being carried. I can't believe it. Thank u

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

My essay, titled "Molly," is a complicated and difficult piece, that honestly I already don't remember writing. It shares some intense & delicate material about her life, our lives together, and her choice to die. Please read with care.

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 months

I recommend reading my book before forming an opinion of it from the tabloid media’s atrocious butchering of it based on web ephemera over which I have no control

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

Life is so weird man One day you’re alive And the next day you’re alive And the next day you’re alive And the next day you’re alive And the next day you’re alive And the next day you’re alive And the endfr Ken skeins JW And rheuuuehshhn And ejejjejeuujhe jejjsnn And eikkjek An

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

I have been thinking of starting up a Molly Brodak Award for Bravery in Poetics that i plan to give out yearly to one writer whose body of work is solely & fantastically their own. If you are interested in donating to the $$ fund i plan to include with this award, please DM/email

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

Things @markbaumer said to me on the phone two days before he died

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blake butler

@blakebutler

14 years

just saw the plastic bag from American Beauty blow past my window 3x in a row. it looked tired, and scared

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Happy 40th birthday to my best friend

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

Trump's signature looks like a bunch of klansman waiting in line to be swallowed by a goat skull

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blake butler

@blakebutler

5 years

People who don’t believe fiction has a purpose should try cleaning out the junk of their childhood home while their mother who has dementia explains the false histories of every object you touch

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 months

The best writing advice i ever got was from lynne sharon schwartz when she opened our workshop by saying, "We are going to read each text assuming it is correct and our presumptions are wrong, until it forces us to decide otherwise; then we will discuss."

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blake butler

@blakebutler

9 years

New size chart: S M L XL XXL XXXL XXXXL VL VVVVVVVVVVL MMXV .com L^L RIGHT? !!!!!!! BALLER CEO YES 0/0 ◯ ♡ ∞ GOD ACTUAL GOD █

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

STOP GIVING GRANTS TO RICH WRITERS FOR THE RECOGNITION

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

One cool thing about books is that even if you get robbed you get to keep them

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

I can collapse now

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

"Jesus" by Molly Brodak

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

I recommend reading things you don't understand

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

Got some noise-canceling headphones so now i just need the sight-canceling glasses, hunger-canceling sweatpants, motion-canceling desk chair, thought-canceling helmet, & face-canceling face

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

From molly's recipe book, in case you need cookies

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Weird time to be releasing a novel about the new panopticon, corporate commodification of culture, and viral ambient memory decay but anyway, some plagued things still are granted bodies - dropping 7/7, available for preorder here:

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

Who hired todd solondz to direct 2017

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

I love you

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Six months

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blake butler

@blakebutler

10 years

kurt cobain would have killed himself 3 or 4 more times by now

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

You learn about literature so that you can participate in the universe in a more direct way; maybe even in a way, if you’re lucky for a while, that accompanies and expands the possibilities of living

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 months

4 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

3 years

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

Another "i was a dickhead in the comments on htmlgiant & now it's causing me problems getting a job, can you erase those?" email i'll be ignoring

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 months

No words for the gratitude I feel to @TriciaLockwood for writing this complex and moving portrait of both Molly, my book, and the complexities of love - please read

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 months

5/5 review of "Molly" in the Telegraph today

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Excited to publish another book so a bunch of people can tell me all the different ways they didn't get it

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 years

Writing workshop where you can only bring in stuff you've written in the last 36 hours and you have to be drunk as fuck to offer feedback

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

What you read is a code that you put in your body that changes you

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blake butler

@blakebutler

10 months

Final proof edits wrapped at long last - physical galleys coming soon (DM if interested) - dropping 12/5/23 Info & preorder:

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blake butler

@blakebutler

10 years

turn down for: 1. elephantitis of the urethra 2. waking up in ohio 3. i swear this baby is pooping 4. your dad got his nips pierced 5. lice

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 year

Gaspar Noé on +/- reviews

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Writing is saving my life again, already

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

So much of so many of our lives are spent waiting for living to happen, to the point that we can't remember why we are alive, which is the point of capitalism; those who feel, hurt; those who don't, take

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

The humor is not lost on me, deathgodoftheuniverse, that after 18 months of relatively total hermitude, the one time i'd really like to be able to go out into the world for once, you zip it up like some shitty fiction i would have written 15 years ago

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Everyone wants me to admit that everything is not all fucked forever and friends I am here to tell you it is all fucked forever and it has always been all fucked forever. When you say different I cannot hear you

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

There will a celebration of the life and work of Molly Brodak in Atlanta this Sunday March 15th at 11 am at Grissom Clark Funeral Home (227 East Lake Dr.) - any and all who knew her would be loved

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blake butler

@blakebutler

5 months

The only list i've ever cared about. If you think writing is dead/boring, try restarting here

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 months

Dinner w the king of LA

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blake butler

@blakebutler

3 years

A spell so that no more friends die (friends of anybody)

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Thinking about how the guy who stabbed & nearly killed beckett said he didn't know why he did it, and how beckett eventually dropped the charges because he decided he liked the guy

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blake butler

@blakebutler

1 month

The only point of writing is freedom

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blake butler

@blakebutler

5 months

Finally having time to read the New Yorker review of Molly, I really urge people who refuse to read the book to read the review. Honestly, I learned a lot about the book from reading Schwartz's take. I'm still trying to figure out what the book is.

Can a Memoir Say Too Much?

In “Molly,” Blake Butler’s pained account of his wife’s death, love demands a near-total exposure of private life.

www.newyorker.com

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 years

New monopoly set where -start w $49 -all properties are already sold -pass go, owe $750 @ 28% APR -3 corners are jail -must be the thimble

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

If someone doesn’t want to hear about your dreams they aren’t worth your time

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blake butler

@blakebutler

7 months

Once molly asked if i'd ever been nominated for a pushcart prize, i laughed & said yeah, a bunch, like i thought it was a joke thing, & i think that pissed her off; she hadn't, she said, so whatever - strange little memory today in accepting her 2024 award on her behalf

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Just ordered pizza online from a place based entirely on the merit of this yelp review: "We held a Wake there in their private room and the food was great, was served hot and the waiter did a great job."

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blake butler

@blakebutler

6 months

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blake butler

@blakebutler

2 months

I think almost everyday about DFW saying he couldn't take any of the early praise for Infinite Jest srsly because there's literally no way anyone could have processed it that quickly. We're too trained to think every window will close the second we stop holding it open

sebastian castillo

@bartlebytaco

2 months

i've always found this one of the strangest parts of the media ecosystem, the assumption that a work of art can only be reviewed immediately before or after its release, as if a book should require less attention once its been out for six months or a year or ten

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Do you ever see yourself getting pushed down the aisle of your own life? Toward a ceremony you didn’t know you were a part of? From out of a hole in the air you thought you were made of. And then the ceremony ends. And then the space of it erodes into exactly where you are

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blake butler

@blakebutler

4 years

Spoke to the dead again last night and received some more info about the purpose of life, what happens immediately after death, and how metadata works. Here is a paragraph

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