“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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“A significant fraction of thru-hikers reach Katahdin, then turn around and start back to Georgia. They just can't stop walking, which kind of makes you wonder.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from A Walk in the Woods
“Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.”
― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, quote from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
“How very American it was to assume that these unsmiling Chinese would be pleased if one showed a preference for their native implements...How very American it was to feel somehow guilty unless one struggled over rice noodles and lumps of meat with things that looked like enlarged knitting needles.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Bonfire of the Vanities
“But do we know how to make love stay?'
I can't even think about it. The best I can do is play it day by day.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Still Life with Woodpecker
“Let's get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.”
― Stephen King, quote from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
Wish You Were Dead
Make Lemonade
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What Was She Thinkin...
His Last Bow
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