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      "text": "We had been so unlucky. By the time we had finally learnt to read properly, there had been nothing left for us to read.",
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      "text": "I hadn’t suspected that a tiny glimmer of hope for the future could transform someone so utterly.",
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      "text": "It would evidently take more than a political regime, more than dire poverty to stop a woman from wanting to be well dressed: it was a desire as old as the world, as old as the desire for children.",
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      "text": "She said she had learnt one thing from Balzac: that a woman’s beauty is a treasure beyond price.",
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