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d8f7490 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. humor life humiliation Paul Murray
0d74eac History, 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. stories Paul Murray
386bb5f 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
91f236c 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 someth.. stories Paul Murray
dabe980 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
08f36ac 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. schools Paul Murray
f0cc6bf He is thinking about asymmetry. This is a world, he is thinking, where you can lie in bed, listening to a song as you dream about someone you love, and your feelings and the music will resonate so powerfully and completely that it seems impossible that the beloved, whoever and wherever he or she might be, should not know, should not pick up this signal as it pulsates from your heart, as if you and the music and the love and the whole univer.. love Paul Murray
d977f82 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. existence youth selling-out maturity existentialism Paul Murray
0bde84e 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
5e0e399 What a tribute this is to art; what a misfortune this is for history. (In reference to Shakespeare's 'Richard III') ricardian Paul Murray Kendall
62005dc You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score in th.. television humor life goals Paul Murray
3548f26 You're talking like a Stalinist!' I cried. 'People don't get jobs to things and learn ! They do it because they 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
96801ce 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 tota.. Paul Murray
c3b7bcb 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" quotes Paul Murray
52ba3df Sometimes the reason we do not see the answer is that we are looking too closely at the question. Paul Murray
345f553 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
a0ecfdb 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 vo.. Paul Murray
fe4f600 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
ea7733e Liam was too Scottish-' 'Oh but Scottish, Bel! Come on, the ? The interminable quotations from ? Anyone who's of coming from Scotland obviously has issues- Paul Murray
83f641c His name was Paul Eluard, and he said this thing once: There is another world, but it is in this one. Ruprecht looked baffled. It's about how -- she could feel herself going red, she squeezed her eyes shut, trying to remember what Mr Scott had told them -- like, how people are always going somewhere? Like everybody's always trying to be not where they are? Like they want to be in Stanford, or in Tuscany, or in Heaven, or in a bigger house o.. Paul Murray
8178d20 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 , is crowded into one tiny little point where none of the laws of society applies, viz., this school. -Ruprecht Paul Murray
4a36079 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 hip.. Paul Murray
7fe260f 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
ab5f10c Never frown even when ur sad, coz u never know whose falling in love with ur smile! Paul Murray
f005a1b 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
b844c70 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
d0521f2 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." science Paul Murray
ec7a09f Pensa all'asimmetria. Questo e un mondo, pensa, in cui puoi startene a letto a sentire una canzone mentre sogni la persona che ami, e i tuoi sentimenti e la canzone si fanno eco a vicenda in modo cosi potente e completo che sembra impossibile che l'amata, chiunque e ovunque sia, non se ne accorga, non riceva il segnale che pulsa dal tuo cuore, come se tu e la musica e l'amore e tutto l'universo siate fusi in un'unica forza che puo essere in.. Paul Murray
37f8daa 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. danger safety children Paul Murray
bb3faec Modern life is a centrifuge; it throws people in every direction. rootlessness migration modern-life modernity Paul Murray
b3fe9df 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. irish Paul Murray
ddd5628 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. love human-condition infidelity Paul Murray
6cf2c0b You know, you spend your childhood watching TV, assuming that at some point in the future everything you see there will one day happen to you: that you too will win a Formula One race, hop a train, foil a group of terrorists, tell someone 'Give me the gun', etc. Then you start secondary school, and suddenly everyone's asking you about your career plans and your long-term goals, and by goals they don't mean the kind you are planning to score.. inspirational tragic-comedy makes-you-think Paul Murray
4ea6200 Although if it's a dream that you truly believe in your heart,' Geoff attempts to console him, 'then in a way, you know, it is real?' 'It's not a dream in my heart,' Skippy scowls. Paul Murray
dc77a97 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. lies relationships love Paul Murray
5286395 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. satire Paul Murray
f1872b0 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, it's our own expectations that crush us. Paul Murray
60e4fc4 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 t.. Paul Murray
7372cab Never trust an Italian. The Nazis did that, and look where it got them. trust Paul Murray
11742e1 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
b32b326 But things like the world-inside-this-one are too big to hold in your head by yourself. You need someone to remind you, or else, you need someone you can tell, and you have to keep telling each other, over and over, throughout your whole life. And as you tell them, the things are slowly binding you together, like tiny invisible strings, or like a frisbee that's thrown back and forth, or like words written on the floor in syrup. TELL LORI. T.. Paul Murray
f849d95 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
70b48b0 and 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
64694a4 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
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