"I think we all recognize that one of the problems in American culture is that increasingly, there's no middle ground. That either you're a celebrity writer or a celebrity poet, or else you're nothing."

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One of the characteristics of North American culture is that you can always start again. You can always move forward, cross a border of a state or a city or a county, and move West, most of the time West. You leave behind guilt, past traditions, memories. You are as if born again, in the sense of the snake: You leave your skin behind and you begin again. For most people in the world, that is totally impossible.

— Isabel Allende