Quotes by Paul Murray

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.

It used to be the smartest people didnt always want to be the richest people.

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!

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.

Capitalism needs war.

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

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

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.

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.

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 . .

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.

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.

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 endeavor! Was that what passed for cinema these days? I felt like I had been violated; violated by a team of accountants. Laura, prostrated by grief, lay weeping on my lap. Frank stared stolidly at the credits, over which, as a coup de grâce, a cat or cats were being strangled to the effect that “My Heart Will Go On,” which at this moment in time was not a sentiment I could endorse.

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.

“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 theyre 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.”