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1fda5af
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In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're . You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it . You don't need a . Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at t..
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humor
ireland
tea
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C.E. Murphy |
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f1001d9
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I'm not a goddamned faith healer! I don't talk to God! I'm a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken! --Joanne
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C.E. Murphy |
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48e0336
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friends don't threaten friends' distributor caps
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C.E. Murphy |
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2d8da52
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You went back in time," he repeated, "and you expect his cell phone to work?" "Well, no, I just, I mean, I came back and he hasn't! Shouldn't he have?" Morrison, very steadily, said, "Were you together?" "No! I just said he went to fight the Morrigan!" "I see." There was a pause. "The man is seventy-four years old, Joanie. He can take care of himself. If you were," a great and patient pause filled the line before he went on, "time traveling..
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morrison
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C.E. Murphy |
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8930fb6
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To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.
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tears
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C.E. Murphy |
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d76894f
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He fell ass over tea Kettle
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C.E. Murphy |
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6470214
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They're constants, aren't they?" ... "Books are. That's why we like them so much. They seem immutable. They're not, of course. Not from the author's first draft to the tenth printing, but they seem like it."
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C.E. Murphy |
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285bbbe
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Why do airline pilots always call passengers "folks"? I don't usually take umbrage at generic terminology--I'm one of those forward-thinkers who believes that "man" encompasses the whole darned race -- but at whatever 0'clock in the mornning. I thought it would be nice to be called sometihng that suggested unwashed masses a little less."
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humor
urban-shaman
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C.E. Murphy |
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10b0773
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Nobody who loved life and new experiences that much was ever going to get old, not really. Wiser and eventually dead, maybe, but not old.
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C.E. Murphy |
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311cc9e
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I suppose I knew on an intellectual level that graves weren't especially made for getting out of. I mean, you start with a hermetically sealed casket and then you dump six feet of dirt on top of it. Over time the earth gets compacted, which can't make it easy to dig through. So even if you're a very angry and determined zombie, you've kind of got your work cut out for you just escaping from the grave. Which was, I suppose, why we got hit wi..
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zombies
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C.E. Murphy |
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a323ca4
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She had a body that even I coveted in a strictly Platonic sense.
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C.E. Murphy |
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47b8974
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You fought demons?" Jane said incredulously, "And I thought my life was weird." "You turn into a giant panther. Your life is weird."
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C.E. Murphy |
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3243049
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I'm not a dog
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C.E. Murphy |
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d49afab
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start with one true thing
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C.E. Murphy |
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f41f4ed
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I told myself that, too. It turned out myself was a skeptical bitch and didn't believe me.
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C.E. Murphy |
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2d758ce
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it took Coyote a very long time indeed to show up, or that he looked distracted when he did. How a dog could look distracted, I didn't know, but there you had it. "I'm not," he said for the umpteenth time, "a dog."
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C.E. Murphy |
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bbda293
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She hissed, right there behind my ear, and I had the horrible idea she was spitting maggots into my hair. Why maggots were a problem when I was about to be dead, I didn't know, but the idea completely grossed me out. "In the womb I heard you die, for no one lives when a banshee cries." I wasn't just going to die. I was going to be rhymed to death. That simply wasn't fair."
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C.E. Murphy |
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1656468
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Since I didn't have any world-class fencing skills, I kicked Cernunnos in the nuts again. I didn't have to know how to use a sword to do that, and he was standing there like he was asking for it, so it seemed justified. Shock and rage filled his green eyes all over again and he doubled. I guess there must be rules that people fighting gods usually followed. Next time, maybe someone would give me a primer.
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C.E. Murphy |
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f3f0ace
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I'm a lawyer. I meet people every day who are on the surface considerably worse than you are. You, Janx, Alban, you're really all so...normal. You can do stuff I can't, but so can Michael Jordan." Dismay hit her palpably enough to make her want to step back, though she held her ground even as she groaned. "Please don't tell me he's one of you." Daisani's shoulders rose and fell, a single admission of silent laughter. "I believe Mr. Jordan..
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C.E. Murphy |
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eef50a9
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Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. "If you'd asked me three months ago I'd have said you were hitting the bottle too hard. But then I got stabbed and should have died, but instead a bunch of cops and ambulance people showed up because somebody who wasn't even there sent them on ahead to save my life. If something like that happens to someone like me, you start to have a little faith in something bigger. I don't know if..
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C.E. Murphy |
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c9541ae
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Billy, I can't even pick my nose without using a finger." Sometimes my mouth should stop and consult my brain before it says anything. Billy got this wide-eyed look of admiration that belonged on a nine-year-old boy. It said, Wow, that was really gross, and, more important, How come I didn't think of it? My mouth consulted my brain this time, and I asked, "I don't suppose you could just forget I said that?" "No," Billy said, in a tone tha..
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C.E. Murphy |
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4843d98
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He can't keep this up forever, Joanne. Stop fucking around." Did other people have little voices in their heads that said things like that?"
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C.E. Murphy |
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9b9b775
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I swear on Annie's grave," Gary repeated to Mel, "this ain't my fault. They were like this when I picked 'em up at the station."
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C.E. Murphy |
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d2a0e28
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we lay there in the dark for a split second before the beast galumphed toward us. Meabh, always quick with a sword, sprang to her feet and charged the dragon head-on while I mostly just wondered who or what I'd offended in a past life that this one was peopled by dragons. Except I didn't have any past lives, so apparently I'd offended somebody in life and was facing instant karma. That didn't really improve anything, in my ever so humble ..
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karma
past-lives
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C.E. Murphy |
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919be4c
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Alban's eyes widened, palpable shock rolling off him. "Daisani's assistant? That Vanessa Gray?" "That one." Alban whistled, a long high sound of wind howling through stone, and Margrit looked at him in surprise. "You can whistle?" His eyebrows wrinkled. "Can't you?" "Of course, but it's so frivolous. You're sort of stolid. I wouldn't have thought whistling was in a gargoyle's nature." Alban chuckled. "I don't do it often."
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C.E. Murphy |
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da85e99
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He rallied a little. "Who are you? What do you know about this? Disease control is our job, not yours. Who are you?" "My name," I said, mostly uner my breath, "is Siobhan Grainne MacNamarra Walkingstick, and I'm the answer to all your prayers."
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C.E. Murphy |
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147ed2b
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Logic was puny in the face of my wrath. Logic was puny and magic was mighty: I had just gotten rebirthed, refilled and renewed, and was fast on my way to resentful.
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wrath
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C.E. Murphy |
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afdb53c
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Desert heat or not, the idea that my younger self was facing her last moments was a bucket of cold water in the face. I didn't like her, but she appeared to have her shit together in a way I hadn't for a long time, and she had, frankly, deserved better than me. I tried to wet my lips, had nothing to do it with and croaked, "Sorry." "Don't be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero."
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responsibility
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C.E. Murphy |
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6e386bb
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I could kidnap your mother," he offered. "If you need the phone records explained."
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C.E. Murphy |
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43dece8
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imagined slights could be more poisonous than real ones.
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C.E. Murphy |
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40e2596
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Find anything about the Blade?" Billy let out an explosive sigh and creaked back in his chair, hands folded behind his head. "Comic book references. Stuff about some swordsman named Bob Anderson. Wesley Snipes pictures." "Really?" I perked up, edging around his desk to try to get a look at the screen. "Any half-naked ones?" "Joanie!" I drooped. "I didn't think so. There wasn't nearly enough half-naked Wesley in those movies, anyway."
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C.E. Murphy |
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aced131
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You ever get the feeling your life is a string festooned with bells and tie4d to hundreds of others you don't know anything about? And that sometimes somebody pulls their string, and your bells ring?" Gary looked at me a long moment before rather gently saying, "Yes and no, darlin'. We all get that feeling from time to time. Difference is, with you, it could be real."
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C.E. Murphy |
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446b024
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It wasn't that I didn't feel like sharing. Mostly I just figured they couldn't do anything about it, so there was no point in worrying them. I said, 'A wee little bit,' instead, in honor of being in Ireland, where one adjective was never enough if three would do.
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ireland
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C.E. Murphy |
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69b128b
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A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.
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C.E. Murphy |
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fc63c48
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I rested my forehead on a grease spot I'd left on the window earlier. The airlines, I thought, must have custodians who clean the windows, or there'd be an inches-thick layer of goo on them from people like me. That thought was proof positive that I shouldn't be allowed to stay up for more than eighteen hours at a time. I have a bad habit of following every thought to its miserable, pathetic little end when I'm tired. I don't mean to. It's ..
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C.E. Murphy |
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f9c1372
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By the time I could see again, the captain had announced the final descent into Seattle. Couldn't they find a less ominous phrase for it? I don't like flying as it is, even without the implication that before landing I might want to have all my worldly and spiritual affairs in order.
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C.E. Murphy |
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3bb3f89
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We circled around and came in from the northwest." I lifted my wrist to show him the compass on my watch band, although I hoped that, being the pilot, he knew we'd approached from the northwest. "I was looking out the window. I saw a woman running down the street. There was a pack of dogs after her and a guy with a switchblade down the street in the direction she was running." "Ma'am," he said, still very patiently. I reached out and took a..
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C.E. Murphy |
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31c728b
|
You seriously think you got some kind of god after you?" Gary asked. Marie nodded. Gary turned to me. "I vote we drop her off at a loony bin and run for the hills." "Are you asking me to run away with you, Gary? After such a short, violent courtship?"
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C.E. Murphy |
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4f909f1
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I opened my eyes to find Gary and my mother sitting cross-legged up against a half-fallen wall, both of them laughing so hard they had tears running down their faces. My mother had Gary's forearm in one hand as she wheezed, "She didn't, she didn't!" and wiped tears away with the other, and Gary nodded so merrily it appeared his head would go bobbling off. It was so completely incongruous with the farewell I'd just experienced I just sat th..
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C.E. Murphy |
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63a7d62
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All thinking things fear. Sentience, perhaps, is facing that fear and conquering it rather than succumbing. A tiger will drown in a tar pit, but a man who can clear his thoughts may survive.
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strength
sentience
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C.E. Murphy |
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e676ee1
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In the past, my brain babbling at such length had meant there was something it either didn't want to think about--which things numbered in the dozens right now--or it was working out some extreme cleverness that would at any moment leap out and surprise me. Much to my dismay, nothing leapt out.
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C.E. Murphy |
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362e2ae
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But maybe, just maybe, I was who and where and what I needed to be. Maybe all the prices that had been paid were nothing more than part of high cost of living.
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C.E. Murphy |
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0eebdc7
|
Being herself was extraordinary enough,
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C.E. Murphy |
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6cbb399
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It's an impossible castle in an enchanted snowstorm in a haunted forest," I said in a voice slightly more shrill than I had hoped for. "Naturally there are invisible servants to care for the horses." "Naturally." Father sounded as rattled as I, which made me feel a little better."
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C.E. Murphy |