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be1d816
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Cutting through Temple Bar toward the river, they pass the cinema outside which Howard met Halley for the first time: this nugget of history he does not pass on to the boys. He remembers walking with her down to the riverside, but it's only as they are crossing Ha'penny Bridge - the elderly construction seeming to sway beneath their impatient feet, the quays of the city stretching away on either side - that he remembers the museum was where..
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Paul Murray |
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78c6851
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The fact is that, after the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, the Irishmen who'd fought in the Great War didn't fit the new way the country imagined itself. If the British were our sworn enemies, why had two hundred thousand Irishmen gone off to fight alongside them? If our history was the struggle to escape from British oppression, what were we doing helping Britain out, fighting and dying on her behalf? The existence of these sol..
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Paul Murray |
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These daydreams persisted like an alternate life
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Paul Murray |
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Remington, for God's sake, stop burping.' 'It's my burp-day.
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Paul Murray |
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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.
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Paul Murray |
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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.
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Paul Murray |
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75a9d6c
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'Cute how?' Zephyr asked her. '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.)
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Paul Murray |
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5b8f552
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Above the lot, the great pink hoop of the Ed's Doughnut House sign broadcasts its frigid synthetic light into the night,
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Paul Murray |
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b836114
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The word `Father' is a small word but, by pronouncing it in prayer, and in particular by repeating the phrase `Our Father', we are achieving `five things', Thomas tells us in his Lectures on St Matthew. First of all, the words `instruct us in our faith'; second, they `raise our hopes'; third, `they serve to stimulate charity'; fourth, they invite us `to imitate God'; and fifth, they call us `to humility'.
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Paul Murray |
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a2c34f3
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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'.
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Paul Murray |