Famous Quotes & Sayings

Paul Murray Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 100 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Paul Murray.

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Famous Quotes By Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1599511

Halley believed that a kiss was the beginning of a story, the story, good or bad, short or long, of an us, and once begun, you had to follow it through to the end. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1236964

This is the way they live now, like two actors in the final performances of a show no one comes to see anymore. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1137252

Never frown even when ur sad, coz u never know whose falling in love with ur smile! — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1561440

Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disintegrate. You start with a love story, you end up manacled to an hourglass, watching the sands run out. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 925569

To hear people talk, you would think no one ever did anything but love each other. But when you look for it, when you search out this love everyone is always talking about, it is nowhere to be found; and when someone looks for love from you, you find you are not able to give it, you are not able to hold the trust and dreams they want you to hold, any more than you could cradle water in your arms. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 247224

To believe in explanations is good, because it means you may believe also that beneath the chaotic, mindless jumble of everything, beneath the horrible disjunction you feel at every moment between you and all you are not, there dwells in the universe a secret harmony, a coherence and rightness like a balanced equation that's out of reach for now but some day will reveal itself in its entirety. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1287684

Skippy's dead, Blowjob! He's dead, and you can't bring him back! Not you, not every bent scientist in every laboratory in the world!' Breathing heavily, Dennis pauses, then turns his dreadful gaze on the others. 'You bummers need to get it through your heads that this is real. None of the stupid bullshit we do to distract ourselves is going to help any more. Spiderman isn't going to help. Eminem isn't going to help. Some fucking gay lame tinfoil time machine isn't going to help. All that stuff is over, don't you see? He's dead! He's dead, and he's going to stay dead for ever! — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2005504

His wife is washed up against him, clinging lifelessly to his arm like seaweed, with no pretense of listening to the priest's small talk. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 636724

Sometimes the reason we do not see the answer is that we are looking too closely at the question. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1122380

I do not think my life would make a very interesting book,' I say. 'I feel I can speak with a certain amount of authority here. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1540141

I only meant, you know, you shouldn't be wasting your time on imbeciles. I know how hard it is to find the right person, but that's no reason to exhaustively work your way through all the wrong people. You seem to be living your romantic life by some kind of process of elimination. It's like matching a Louis Quatorze armchair with one of those plastic patio tables. It simply doesn't work." "Oh, I see," Bel said. "I'm an armchair, is that it?" "A Louis Quatorze armchair," I qualified. "And my boyfriends are patio tables." "Actually," I remembered, "this one's more like one of those self-assembly Swedish wardrobes. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1803119

I felt a bit like Dante, chancing upon one of his old acquaintances in the nth circle of hell. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1451594

Life makes fools of us all sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, it's our own expectations that crush us.
from Skippy Dies — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2011840

Capitalism needs war. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 559501

She hadn't written so much as a word of a story, but for the first time in a long time she felt she was inside a story of her own, and surely that was better yet. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1162069

Life makes fools of all of us sooner or later. But keep your sense of humor and you'll at least be able to take your humiliations with some measure of grace. In the end, you know, its our own expectations that crush us. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1647346

What was happening to my life? Was this how it worked in the real world? Was it nothing more than a sandstorm through which one walked with one's eyes closed, every moment obliterated by the next? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 927171

I believe his lies, so he believes mine.' She turns and looks at me straight on. 'That's how it goes at the end of love. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1813437

Our universe, one could almost say, is actually built out of loneliness; and that fundamental loneliness persists upwards to haunt every one of its residents. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2058669

But the words die away on his lips, as he is caught in a smile as sudden and bright and paralysing as a prison searchlight ...
God, those eyes! Just looking at them is like being kissed - or, no, like being magicked off to another world, where it's just the two of them alone, the rest of the universe mere tinselled scenery, orbiting in a slow waltz around them- — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 371985

Two ghosts, briefly rescued from oblivion; a small act of reclamation, a chance to make amends.
-Paul Murray, SKIPPY DIES — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 302574

That's quite all right, I said. Sfumato, that was what the painters called it; a blurring or elision of the lines, the kind Leonardo had used to give his Mona Lisa her beguiling flux. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 725564

It's a confidentiality clause. No doubt you'll be familiar with these from your days in the City. In signing, you consent by law not to disclose sensitive information pertaining to school affairs, including what we have discussed here today.'
Howard gapes back at him stupidly. 'Are you serious?'
'Merely a precaution, Howard, making sure we've got all our angles covered. No need to rush into it right away. Take it home with you, think it over. If you want to turn it down, do the honorable thing, I can't stop you. I'm sure you'll find a position elsewhere easily enough. Gather there are vacancies in St Anthony's at the moment. Teacher got stabbed there just last week. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 289866

The accursed ship didn't sink for a full three hours. By the time it did, I was feeling so traumatized that even watching Dogface die offered little consolation. The dialogue, the acting, the vast emptiness of the whole endeavour! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I have been violated; violated by a team of accountants. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1441232

It used to be the smartest people didn't always want to be the richest people. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 449645

The achievement of maturity, psychologically speaking, might be said to be the realization and acceptance that we simply cannot live independently from the world, and so we must live within it, with whatever compromises that might entail. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1703841

-so that for these few moments it actually seems that Ruprecht could be right, that everything, or at least the small corner of everything that is the Seabrook Sports Hall, is resonating to the same chord, the same feeling, the one that over a lifetime you learn a million ways to camouflage but never quite to banish - the feeling living in a world of apartness, of distances you cannot overcome; it's almost as if the strange out-of-nowhere voice is the universe itself, some hidden aspect of it that rises momentarily over the motorway-roar of space and time to console you, to remind you that although you can't overcome the distances, you can still sing the song
out into the darkness over the separating voids, towards a fleeting moment of harmony ... — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2204857

There's no escaping it,' he'd been fond of telling us when he was well, 'the way you look defines who you are. You might argue for your soul or your heart, but everyone else in the world will judge you on your big nose or your weak chin. Six billion people could be wrong, but you'll never get them to admit it. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 394850

Seizing an imaginary microphone, Dennis adopts a limp Estuary accent: 'Masturbating's changed a lot since I were a lad, Brian. In my day, we masturbated for the sheer love of it. Day and night we did it, all the kids on our estate, masturbating on the old waste ground, masturbating up against the wall of the house ... I remember me mam coming out and shouting, "Stop that masturbating and come in for your tea! You'll never amount to anything if all you think about is masturbating!" Masturbating crazy we were. Your young masturbators today, though, it's all about the money, it's all about agents and endorsements. Sometimes I worry that the masturbating's in danger of being squeezed out altogether. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1481405

Maybe instead of strings it's stories things are made of, an infinite number of tiny vibrating stories; once upon a time they all were part of one big giant superstory, except it got broken up into a jillion different pieces, that's why no story on its own makes any sense, and so what you have to do in a life is try and weave it back together, my story into your story, our stories into all the other people's we know, until you've got something that to God or whoever might look like a letter, or even a whole word ... — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 289493

Goodbye, Earth! So long, you piece of crap, except for Italy. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 648144

One would have a strong case for arguing that it was the men in her life - the lovers, the father, the directors, producers, critics - who destroyed it. And yet when you looked at the broad sweep they appeared more as agents, collectively, of a darker, wider force of ruin that pursued her. It was as if her epic beauty somehow angered the gods and drew down a suitably Promethean punishment; and the girl behind the beauty - the nice girl from Connecticut who at the end would wonder whether, if her life had been a movie, she would have been cast to play her part - found she had wandered off the lot into a Greek tragedy. [On Gene Tierney] — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1572935

A tiny number of very rich people, including fat cat bankers like us, are sucking up a bigger and bigger percentage of the wealth. And that gap will continue to widen, because with all our extra capital we go and buy up all the assets, so that for instance when Chang working down there in Spar needs somewhere to live, he has to rent his house from me, meaning that I'm getting most of his wages too. Now, provided you're me and not Chang, that's good news. But if you are Chang, then not only is your slice of the pie shrinking, but there are also more and more Changs trying to get a bite of it. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 847975

You're talking like a Stalinist!' I cried. 'People don't get jobs to achieve things and learn values! They do it because they have to, and then they use whatever's left over to buy themselves things that make them feel less bad about having jobs! Can't you see, it's just a terrible vicious circle! — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1755801

And even though it didn't work, it did sort of work, because when we're all together, it's like Skippy's there too, because each of us has his own little jigsaw piece of him he remembers, and when you fit them all together, and you make the whole picture, then it's like he comes to life. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1504361

Since when has love ever looked for reasons, or evidence? Why would love bow to the reality of things, when it creates a reality of its own, so much more vivid, wherein everything resonates to the key of the heart? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1997262

It gives the war a whole new dimension, you know, hearing from someone right there in the thick of it. They really connected with it.'

'Maybe it reminds them of school,' she suggests. 'Didn't someone describe the trenches as ninety-nine per cent boredom and one per cent terror?'

'I don't know about boredom. God, the chaos of it, the brutality. And it's so vivid. I'd definitely be interested in reading his poetry, if only to see how he can go from describing, you know, people getting their guts blown out, to writing about love.'

'Maybe it's not that much of a leap,' she says. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1070053

It was depressing; I don't know why I didn't just leave it and go to bed. Perhaps I hoped that by simply staying awake I could somehow hold the world as it was: keep it in that dark, rain-filled moment, and stop the fateful day from coming. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1504896

For Guido the past, like a Third World country, was merely another resource to be exploited and abandoned when the time comes; and that is why civilization is built by men like him and the Automator, and not men like Howard, who have never quite worked out which stories are disposable, and which, if any, you're actually supposed to believe. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1510560

Because what you have to remember, if there's one thing, it's that everybody's human, that's the first thing they are, whether they're beautiful or not, or rich or poor, or actresses from the 1940s or Frank ... They're all humans, the first thing they are is human, do you see? Do you see, Charles? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1564762

To look out the window, it might be the 1980s still, the height of the heroin plague, the police doing nothing, the politicians doing nothing. The same faces loitering in the forecourt of the boarded-up garage, proud of their intractability, the notoriety of their home. Wearing their failure like a badge of honour, generation after generation, parent and child. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1540163

Gradually the awful truth dawns on you: that Santa Claus was just the tip of the iceberg - that your future will not be the rollercoaster ride you'd imagined, that the world occupied by your parents, the world of washing the dishes, going to the dentist, weekend trips to the DIY superstore to buy floor tiles, is actually largely what people mean when they speak of 'life'. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1780007

You always were such a worrier. It was as if you thought your worrying was all that held the world together, and if you stopped for a split second the whole thing would just fly apart. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1948875

Irish-looking,' Halley said, by which she meant a collection of indistinct features - pale skin, mousy hair, general air of ill-health - that combine to mysteriously powerful romantic effect. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 84907

Ignoring is what you are supposed to do with bullies, so they get bored and leave you alone. But the problem in school is that they don't get bored, because whatever else there is to do is more boring still. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2242084

And so the next morning I left my room and took my suitcases down in the elevator to the lobby, where I handed in the key. Every movement, every tiny social transaction seemed backlit, consecrated somehow, like the footsteps a prisoner counts off in his head as he is marched to the scaffold. Frank was waiting outside, leaning with his arms crossed against his rusty white van. Someone had drawn a penis in the dust on its side. "All right?" he said. "Capital," I said. "Capital. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2234437

Mrs. P.? Oh no. She's the help. Bosnian, you know. Or is it Serbian? An absolute treasure, anyway. As I always say to Bel, if there's one good thing to come out of all this fuss in the Balkans, it's the availability of quality staff ... The words died away on my lips: once again I found myself trailing off in the stare of those unblinking eyes. This fellow was like some kind of after-dinner black hole. My anxiety began to mount again. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2172485

And life isn't like the movies: There's no ominous swell to the sound track, no fatalistic overhead shot, nothing to tell you that this moment is the one your life will turn on; instead it's like a train silently switching tracks, sheering off midjourney into a whole other part of the night. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2124839

Fix that hair! Close that mind! Repeat after me! Page me the second the old man croaks it! Now, are you boys ready? A Seabrook boy is always ready. Ready to work. Ready to play. Ready to listen to his teachers, especially the greatest educator of them all, Jesus. as Jesus said to me once, Greg, what's your secret? And I said, Jesus
study your notes! Get to class! Shave that beard! You show up to your first day on the job dressed like a hippie, of course they're going to crucify you, I don't care whose son you are ... — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2099154

They wanted her for the same reason as the studios: her stellar beauty; and just as she did for the studios, she morphed and mutated and recomposed this beauty into the precise form of their desires, until there was nothing of her left. [On Gene Tierney] — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2091861

If it's a choice between a difficult truth and a simple lie, people will take the lie every time. Even if it kills them. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1976632

Outside, the sirens go whirling off in another direction, leaving only the sky stretched over the houses, the lonely beautiful universe, a sad song played on a broken instrument. She wonders if Skippy did hear them tonight. Ruprecht told her that even though you can't see strings, scientists believed the theory was true because it was the most beautiful explanation. So, Skippy heard their song, that would be the beautiful explanation, wouldn't it? For tonight? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1952532

It's like when you find out your lover has been unfaithful: in one horrible instant everything she was to you, the whole beautiful enchantment, falls away, and you see her as she really is - mortal, machinating, tethered like everyone else to a little patch of space and time. And the worst of it is that you knew all along. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1669299

I don't see Number Four though - oh." Number Four, wearing an unflattering chartreuse jacket, was sitting alone on the chewed-up grass, despondently licking his testicles. "Hmm, I don't know, Bel . — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1946772

I pursed my lips. "Well maybe I didn't," I said. I felt horribly like a hoodwinked schoolgirl. "Understand, I mean." Mirela sighed and stroked her hand and looked down at the cold shaft of the prosthesis. "We had a nice time, didn't we? But now we have to go back to our lives. You know that." I got up and began storming about the room. "But you don't - " I said agitatedly. "I mean to say you don't love him - " She could not have turned cooler if I had poured iced water over her; I could feel the temperature in the room drop. "I never said it had anything to do with love," she said impersonally, like a piano teacher correcting a child who keeps fudging his scales. "Who or what I love is my business. I said I needed him. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1792479

Prayer - Christian prayer - by its very nature is born out of an acknowledgment of need, out of an honest recognition of spiritual poverty. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1789494

Most of the world's wrongs are caused by people taking themselves and their ideas too seriously. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 2270846

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and cracked his knuckles, the subterranean light of the television playing over his bony face; for a moment I almost felt sorry for him, and I was about to ask whether he'd taken heroin to replace the self-worth that society hadn't given him [ ... ] — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1750632

These daydreams persisted like an alternate life — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1732671

The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideas - to make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitrary and ephemeral. And that helps us to deal with our emotions and to keep going. Holding on to one perspective, on the other hand, whether it takes the form of grief or anger or a particular political standpoint, is often destructive to us and to those around us — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1720506

Out here the sunsets were like Italian operas, torrid, emotional affairs that went on for three hours or more, hanging in the sky like burning castles. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1692662

To the casual observer it may have looked like I was living a life of indolence, compared to the noisy industry with which the city to the north was ripping itself to pieces. It was true that, after a brief but regrettable entanglement with Higher Learning, I had fairly much confined my activities to the house and its environs. The simple fact of it was that I was happy there, and as I didn't have any skills to speak of, or gifts to impart, I didn't see why I ought to burden the world with my presence. It was not true, however, to say that I did nothing. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 328747

None of us mentioned An Evening of Long Goodbyes, whose race had been so catastrophic that, by the end, neither Frank nor I could summon the will to gloat. He had begun badly, getting his head stuck in the gate and having to be extricated by the stewards, and continued with a series of humiliating and distinctly uncanine trips and stumbles, disgracing himself beyond redemption in the third lap, when his muzzle came off and, to the boos of the crowd, he abandoned the race to leap over the hoardings and snatch a hot dog from the hand of a small boy. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 607294

I'm just saying that once that have an excuse, people will do anything. They do what they are told, and they take their money and they think it's all okay because it's just their job, while their real self is what happens after work, when they're bouncing a baby on the knee, or writing poems about snowflakes or whatever. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 520877

Fascinating ... The whole thing [the school dance] seems to work on a similar principle to a supercollider. You know, two streams of opposingly charged particles accelerated till they're just under the speed of light, and then crashed into each other? Only here alcohol, accentuated secondary sexual characteristics and primitive "rock and roll" beats take the place of velocity. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 510976

None of it made any difference. The hollow feeling refused to go away. The next days were very hard. I found myself in the grip of a crippling ennui. I was back at square one, but I couldn't bring myself to resume my job hunt; it was all I could do to drag myself from the bedroom floor to the sofa. With every passing day my financial affairs grew more ruinous, and it became harder and harder even to conceive of how I might dig myself out of the hole I was in - which only compounded my ennui, and my disinclination to do anything about it. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 489192

On the way back, Dennis, who has been unusually quiet this lunchtime, speaks up. 'I've been thinking about that Robert Frost poem,' he says. 'I don't think it's about making choices at all.'
'What's it about, so?' Geoff says.
'Anal sex,' Dennis says.
'Anal sex?'
'How'd'you figure, Dennis?'
'Well, once you see it, it's pretty obvious. Just look at what he says. He's in a wood, right? He sees two roads in front of him. He takes the one less travelled. What else could it be about? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 451349

I saw myself as reviving a certain mode of life, a mode that had been almost lost: the contemplative life of the country gentleman, in harmony with his status and history. In Renaissance times they had called it sprezzatura. The idea was to do whatever one did with grace, to imbue one's every action with beauty, while at the same time making it look quite effortless. Thus, if one were to work at, say, law, one should raise it to the level of an art; if one were to laze, then one must laze beautifully. This, they said, was the true meaning of being an aristocrat. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 417438

[H]istory, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn't make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn't fit. And often that is quite a lot. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 362633

Liam was too Scottish-'
'Oh but so Scottish, Bel! Come on, the bagpipes? The interminable quotations from Braveheart? Anyone who's proud of coming from Scotland obviously has issues- — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 358098

Nd she sees, like in a vision, that life and the future are going to be way more complicated than she ever expected, impossibly, unbearably complicated and difficult. In that same moment she feels herself grow older, like she's finished a level in a video game and moved on invisibly to the next stage; it's a tiredness that takes over her body, a tiredness like nothing before, like she's swallowed a ton weight ... — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 354010

According to string theory, which Professor Tamashi and other scientists have been using to try to solve the Big Bang, in addition to the four dimensions of spacetime we know, there are six of these very small, curled-up dimensions, making ten all told. And the strings, which are little strands of energy, wiggle around vibrating in these ten dimensions.'

'Like Dennis's mother,' Mario, seeking vengeance for the ant slur, interjects, 'wiggling around vibrating with her vibrator, because she is a famous slut, and also, she has ten dimensions because she is a fat bitch. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 670058

Some bruises you wear like badges of honour: when you got it playing rugby, or quad racing, or falling off something while drunk, no opportunity is lost to show off a good contusion. A bruise inflicted by someone else, however, is a whole other story: it's like a big flashing arrow marking you out as punchable, and before long there'll be boys queuing up to add bruises of their own, as if they'd just been waiting for somebody to show them it could be done. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 292972

His name was Paul Eluard, and he said this thing once: There is another world, but it is in this one ... It's like, you know, inside every stove there's a fire. Well, inside every grass blade there's a grass blade, that's just like burning up with being a grass blade. And inside every tree, there's a tree, and inside every person there's a person, and inside this world that seems so boring and ordinary, if you look hard enough, there's a totally magical beautiful world. And anything you would want to know, or anything you would want to happen, all the answers are right there where you are right now. In your life. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 269467

Was it? I said cautiously, it having been my occasional habit to watch television in the drawing room without the encumbrance of trousers. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 243235

Never trust an Italian. The Nazis did that, and look where it got them. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 243074

I decided I would teach Mrs. P. a lesson by cooking my own meal. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 205500

The greatest victories are therefore never without the shadow of loss; every path you take, no matter how lofty or effulgent, aches not only with the memory of what you left behind, but with the ghosts of all the untaken paths, now never to be taken, running parallel. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 184441

Life is a precious commodity, Charles. It's time you achieved your full potential and learned the true value of things." "You're talking like a Stalinist!" I cried. "People don't get jobs to achieve things and learn values! They do it because they have to, and then they use whatever's left over to buy themselves nice things that make them feel less bad about having jobs! — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 101766

She closes her eyes but can't fall to sleep, and so instead she conjures up again the substance of the dream ... Awake it doesn't take, though; it feels like someone else's life and she like a voyeur, watching from the outside. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 91556

I don't mind crack," I said. "I like crack as much as the next man. But it's not doing a thing for my nerves, and I already have a splitting headache - I say, I don't suppose those heroin dealers carry Anadin or acetaminophen or anything like that, do they?" "I think they just have heroin, Charlie. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1042424

Lack is the last great gold rush, Claude. The world is poor and getting poorer. But we can turn that to our advantage. When someone's got nothing, does he care how much debt he gets into? When he's walled in and someone offers him a way out, does he stop to read the small print? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1451252

When he gets up he spends an hour kicking and stamping on his French horn so he will not have to play it again. Music, maths, these are things that no longer make any sense to him. They are too perfect, they do not belong here. He does not khow how he ever believed this universe could be a symphony played on super-strings, when it sounds like shit, played on shit. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1395485

What I'm thinking is - Ozymandias." "Oz-y-mandias?" "You know, the poem. Ozymandias, king of kings, look on my works, ye mighty, something something, I forget the rest - has a kind of a grandeur to it, don't you think? Kind of a presence?" "I dunno, Charlie, it sounds a bit gay." "A bit gay?" "A bit, yeah." "Well what do you suggest?" "How about Paul?" "Paul? You can't call a dog Paul. Why would you want to call it Paul?" "I had a mate once called Paul." "So did I," I remembered; and we both reflected for a moment. "I suppose he does have a sort of a paulish quality. Well, maybe we should leave it for the time being. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1358205

Her eyes were an intense, electrical blue, and didn't so much meet as violently earth themselves in one's own. It was something of a relief when she blinked. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1354812

I'll saw my hands off before I appear on stage with you and your Orchestra of Gays!' Dennis bellows. 'Do you hear me? I'll saw my hands off! — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1351176

Too much sparkle can detract from the focal point of the painting, so I blend some areas to tone down the look of the pastels in less important areas. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1348376

Imagine a fade-out here, if you please, or one of those discreet rows of asterisks, to indicate the passage of time - not very much time, admittedly, as one of us was out of practice and perhaps a little overexcited - anyway, we return to the scene with the two participants lying back on their pillows, bedsheets now chastely drawn up to their chins, watched silently through the doorway by a stuffed otter and the head of a china basset hound, half-hidden under a frayed gingham tablecloth. Everything was perfectly still; it felt like no one in the whole wide world was awake but us - like we had stolen a march on time, and although our problems waited for us on the other side, these moments were ours to let float by as we pleased. How sweet it was, after so much turbulence, not even to have to talk, or think. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1168258

If you do it in the bookies, it's a bet ... If you pay some 23-year-old in an Armani suit two hundred grand to go to the window for you, it's a derivative. — Paul Murray

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People don't want the truth,' he says, waving a hand at the streets around us. 'They want better-quality lies. High definition lies on fifty-inch screens. — Paul Murray

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Their faith in him is at once touching and alarming
their trust that they are safe simply because he's with them, as if an adult presence warded of all possible threat, emanated an unbreachable forcefield. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 1461467

Modern life is a centrifuge; it throws people in every direction. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 991902

When you think about it, the Big Bang's a big like school, isn't it?
...
Well, I mean to say, one day we'll all leave here and become scientists and bank clerks and driving instructors and hotel managers
the fabric of society, so to speak. But in the meantime, that fabric, that is to say, us, the future, is crowded into one tiny little point where none of the laws of society applies, viz., this school.
-Ruprecht — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 989546

She never came back after mid-term break; according to the Automator, 'unforeseen circumstances' had forced her to extend her holiday. Every day Howard sees her classes trooping despondently from the Geography Room to the study hall, or carrying votive bundles of cardboard and paper to the recycling bins, their faces anxious, hopeful, like Indians doing a rain dance. He knows how they feel. Since mid-term he's existed in a constant state of tension, braced against every moment as the one that might finally restore her. Even out of school, even on his own, shopping in the supermarket, sitting at the traffic lights, he finds himself holding his breath. But the days are a series of ghost pregnancies, delivering nothing. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 830441

Above the lot, the great pink hoop of the Ed's Doughnut House sign broadcasts its frigid synthetic light into the night, — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 788843

Perhaps there simply is no grain of goodness in the heart of man, waiting to be brought to the light, — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 748067

Here at Seabrook, we judge a man by the sum of his actions, the sum. In this case we have a man with an unparalleled dediciation to this school and to the boys of this school. Does one error in judgement, however grievious, does that cancel out at a stroke all the good he's done? The good of that care? — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 718240

Ruprecht can build another pod though, right? I mean it was mostly just tinfoil.'
'The problem is that he has no blueprint. From the original design he keeps making changes, but these he does not write down. So it is impossible to replicate exactly.'
Later that day, Ruprecht approaches Skippy. His expression is feverish. 'I've devised a foolproof plan to get my pod back from St Brigid's,' he says. 'I call it, "Operation Falcon".'
Skippy looks dubious.
'This is your chance to get in on the ground floor!'
'No way, Ruprecht, not after how that last one went.'
'That was Operation Condor. This is Operation Falcon. It's a totally different operation.'
'Sorry. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 715434

So this is the boom, eh?" I said. "Not exactly Scott Fitzgerald, is it?" "I'll tell you what it's like," he said glumly. "It's like being in Caligula's Rome, and everyone around you's having an orgy, and you're the mug stuck looking after the horse." He pulled heavily on his cigarette. "The whole thing'll come crashing down," he said bleakly, "and all anyone'll have done is eaten a lot of expensive cheese. — Paul Murray

Paul Murray Quotes 678588

There was a silence, and I looked at Laura - really looked at her - and had the sudden impression that I was having dinner with a simulacrum, a knockoff. I felt like the man who buys the box of genuine wartime memorabilia at auction and brings it home to discover, under the first layer, piles and piles of shredded newspaper. — Paul Murray