Ariadne made an impression on you, and that's great. But life is not literature. Sooner or later, the spell wears off, the romantic feelings disappear, and you're left watching somebody's body disintegrate. You start with a love story, you end up manacled to an hourglass, watching the sands run out.

— Paul Murray

Capitalism needs war.

— Paul Murray

Fascinating ... The whole thing [the school dance] seems to work on a similar principle to a SuperCollider. You know, two streams of opposing charged particles accelerated till they're 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.

— Paul Murray

History, in the end, is only another kind of story, and stories are different from the truth. The truth is messy and chaotic and all over the place. Often it just doesn’t make sense. Stories make things make sense, but the way they do that is to leave out anything that doesn’t fit. And often that is quite a lot.

— Paul Murray

I believe his lies, so he believes mine.' She turns and looks at me straight on. 'That's how it goes at the end of love.

— Paul Murray

I decided I would teach Mrs. P. a lesson by cooking my own meal.

— Paul Murray

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.

— Paul Murray

I don’t mind crack,” I said. “I like to 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 Anacin or acetaminophen or anything like that, do they?” “I think they just have heroin, Charlie.

— Paul Murray

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, Be. .

— Paul Murray

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

— Paul Murray