58 Quotes by Paul Murray

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Es geht darum, dass [...] die Menschen immer irgendwohin gehen. Dass alle immer nicht da sein wollen, wo sie sind. [...] Oder dass sie anders sein wollen. [...] Sie sind so damit beschäftigt, irgendwo anders hinzukommen, dass sie gar nicht die Welt sehen, in der sie sind. [...] Statt nach Wegen aus unserem Leben heraus zu suchen, sollten wir lieber nach Wegen in das Leben hinein suchen.