Quotes from C.E. Murphy

Music, unleashed, can uplift and create and destroy, stripping away pretenses and leaving raw, exposed vulnerability behind.

Thank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.

Don't be sorry. Be good. Be right. Be a hero.

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.

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.

A clean desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.

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.

I could kidnap your mother," he offered. "If you need the phone records explained.

imagined slights could be more poisonous than real ones.

He lets me fly.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

What do you suppose we would do, I said conversationally, if we ever had sex? I mean, what would we call each other? Captain and Walker? Morrison and Detective? Or would we just find excuses to not call each other anything?

Sometimes, Emilia thought irritably, it was easier to be eighteen and convinced of your righteousness than over thirty-five and aware of your foibles.

The dancers were whisked away to the hospital suffering from severe electrolyte imbalances, which my mind insisted on processing as "severe acolyte imbalances." Once I'd been assured they'd be okay, I kept snickering at visions of little hooded figures singing Gregorian chants and stumbling around like drunkards.

Being herself was extraordinary enough

I can tell the difference between a Corvette and a Mustang. It was the woman sitting on the hood that got me flustered.

Morrison was treading on very thin ice, the words strained, and the only reason he was doing it was for me. I looked at him and wondered what he'd do if I curled myself against his chest and held on. I didn't even think I had it in me to cry. I just wanted to be somewhere safe for a little while, and Captain Michael Morrison's arms seemed like the safest place in the world right then.

what mattered, what really mattered, was that I could just maybe save one person. Nobody could save every one, but I could help individuals, and that, when I got right down to it, was a hell of a thing.