“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 sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. 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 that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“I'm not a goddamned faith healer! I don't talk to God! I'm a mechanic and her goddamned engine was broken!
--Joanne ”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“friends don't threaten friends' distributor caps”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“He fell ass over tea Kettle”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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 just that my brain and my tongue get unhinged. Though some of my less charitable acquaintances would say this condition didn't require sleep deprivation.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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.”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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 fistful of his shirt. Actually, at the last moment, I grabbed the air in front of his shirt. I didn’t think security could throw me out of the airport for grabbing air in a threatening fashion, not even in this post-9/11 age.
“Don’t ma’am me . . .”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
“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?”
― C.E. Murphy, quote from Urban Shaman
C.E. Murphy
Born place: in Kenai, Alaska, The United States
Born date June 1, 2018
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“The gelding held still when he took the reins, swung nimbly onto the horse’s wide back and patted its withers. “You’ve grown fat on plains grass, Gnat. This journey will do you good.”
Martise’s eyes widened. “Gnat? His name is Gnat?” She stared at the mountain of horseflesh, heavily muscled and big-boned, with a girth that would make riding astride a challenge, and he stood at least seventeen hands high.
Gnat swung his large head in her direction, as if questioning her incredulity. Silhara stared down his nose, the expression made even more imperious by his high seat on the horse’s back. “I didn’t think ‘Butterfly’ suitable.”
A betraying flutter rose in her throat. “No,” she said, eyes tearing with the effort to hold in her laughter. “I suppose not.”
― Grace Draven, quote from Master of Crows
“A man lives his life only when he is marching, i thought, when he keeps marching onwards at any price. When he stops marching onwards, he decays. The joy of life is the joy of the experience that comes from feeling one's own strength.”
― Jan Valtin, quote from Out of the Night: The Memoir of Richard Julius Herman Krebs alias Jan Valtin
“Most humans, in varying degrees, are already dead. In one way or another they have lost their dreams, their ambitions, their desire for a better life. They have surrendered their fight for self-esteem and they have compromised their great potential. They have settled for a life of mediocrity, days of despair and nights of tears. They are no more than living deaths confined to cemeteries of their choice. Yet they need not remain in that state. They can be resurrected from their sorry condition. They can each perform the greatest miracle in the world. They can each come back from the dead...”
― Og Mandino, quote from The Greatest Miracle in the World
“What is learned out of necessity is inevitably more powerful than the learning that comes easily.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Audio CD)
“Avoid those who seek friends in order to maintain a certain social status or to open doors they would not otherwise be able to approach.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Akras manuskripts
Wild Seed
Silence
The Year of Living B...
Airborn
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