Cunningham Family Quotes

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...

Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it's who you'd spill it for.

But I promised to be reliable, not competent

If a killer is ever revealed and your ‘percentage read’ isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.

There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life." -Laura Brown-

Anger is as much an heirloom as any Rolex.

Owe, owe, owe. You use that word so much. A family is not a credit card.

Call me a reliable narrator. Everything I tell you will be the truth, or, at least, the truth as I knew it to be at the time that I thought I knew it.

You can tell a lot about someone from whether they can handle an uncomfortable silence. If they ride it out or snap it off.

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.

Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.

But a bad person who thinks they’re a good one—now, that’s what got him into trouble.

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land.

The wind was cruel; it found every crevasse in my clothes, invaded and patted me down like I owed it money.

...my editor had crossed out my first go at this sentence and written Hypo=cold, Hyper=hot in the margin, in that helpful yet smug voice editors are born with, wishing to both correct you and impart their correctness upon you at the same time.

This works to spoil films too: the highest-profile actor with the fewest lines is always the villain, and a sudden wide-shot of a character crossing a road means they are about to be hit by a car. A good author must not only wrong-foot the reader within the narrative, they must do it within the form of the novel itself. There are clues baked into the very object.

I'm sorry about before," I said. Seeing as we were shoulder to shoulder, I spoke outwards, lobbing my apology into the void of the mountain. It's the only way blokes know how to show humility, by pretending we're at a urinal.

We are seven chapters away from the next death.

One day you’ll realize family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.

I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached.

a shitty personality can make even the finest man on earth seem ugly.

Have I killed someone? Yes. I have. Who was it? Let’s get started.

know some authors are incapable of having a woman throw up without it being a clue to a pregnancy. These same authors seem to think nausea is the only indication of childbearing, not to mention their belief that vomit shoots out the woman’s mouth within hours of plot-convenient fertilisation. By some authors, I mean male ones.

There is only one plot hole you could drive a truck through.

Just look at how they’ve treated you. And you still think you owe them? One day you’ll realise family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.

one of the kindest things you can do to someone is to cut them off.

Everyone in my family has killed someone. Some of us, the high achievers, have killed more than once.

But I have no patience for cheaters. I don’t care what people say—cheating never ‘just happens.’ If your eye’s wandering, then there’s something wrong with your relationship. Either work things out with your partner or have the balls to break things off before jumping into bed with someone else. It’s pretty simple.

I wanted a settled life and a shocking one. Think of Van Gogh, cypress trees and church spires under a sky of writhing snakes. I was my father's daughter. I wanted to be loved by someone like my tough judicious mother and I wanted to run screaming through the headlights with a bottle in my hand. That was the family curse. We tended to nurse flocks of undisciplined wishes that collided and canceled each other out. The curse implied that if we didn't learn to train our desires in one direction or another we were likely to end up with nothing. Look at my father and mother today. I married in my early twenties. When that went to pieces I loved a woman. At both of those times and at other times, too, I believed I had focused my impulses and embarked on a long victory over my own confusion. Now, in my late thirties, I knew less than ever about what I wanted. In place of youth's belief in change I had begun to feel a nervous embarrassment that ticked inside me like a clock. I'd never meant to get this far in such an unfastened condition. (p.142)

Andy didn’t need to say aloud what I’d written under “Next of kin”—It’s a family reunion, so anyone here, unless Avalanche

Because now I know that in the months after something so devastating, everything feels like sleepwalking.

We haven’t met properly,” I said, as she threaded me through housekeeping carts vomiting fluffy white towels. “People call me Ern.” “As in, cremated?” “It’s short for Ernest.

If a killer is ever revealed and your “percentage read” isn’t at least in the high eighties, they cannot be the real killer; there is simply too much of the book still to be read.

I pegged him as a country cop who’d spent most of his career with his feet on the desk or giving tourists like Lucy speeding tickets. He seemed more annoyed to have been pulled from his comfortable day than interested in the corpse.

...a much younger woman, one of those round-faced, tiny-featured women who were touted as beauties though they were not in fact particularly beautiful. They were simply the daughters of wealthy families powerful enough to demand that the concept of beauty be expanded to include them.

I’d been so desperate to make a family, to force Erin to make me one, that I’d forgotten the one that had formed around me. Family is gravity. I realized then what Sofia had told me back at the very start of all this. Family is not whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.

Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God? —Membership oath of the Detection Club, 1930, a secret society of mystery writers including Agatha Christie, G. K. Chesterton, Ronald Knox, and Dorothy L. Sayers

Apart from the murders, it's been a successful reunion after all." Ernest Cunningham

I promised to be reliable, not competent.

You write books about how to write books that you’ve never written, bought by people who will never write one.

Let me in so I can keep pretending to be a lawyer and you can keep pretending to be a detective.

I don’t trust a single one of them. You’re the only person I can talk to because you’re the only one who was willing to stand up in that courtroom and condemn me.

Well, in that case, could you tell this wannabe Poirot to stop harassing your guests? And if you want to quell panic, how about not throwing the word “murder” around?

She is a Small Business Owner in the same way Andy is a Feminist, in that she declares it loudly, often, and she’s the only one who believes it.

Family is gravity.

We all need people to protect us sometimes.

He can play the gentleman all he wants. I know he's still an asshole at heart.

There are things that cannot be changed, and you don’t try to change them.

the repetition was a comfort against the burden of decision-making.

Advertised as the highest drive-in accommodation in Australia, which, to be fair, is like bragging about being the world’s tallest jockey,

Witty repartee is not well serviced by truth.

She slid the book in—it was miscategorized, if you ask me, since Mary Westmacott is a pseudonym for Agatha Christie, but what’s in a name?—turned and frowned

Corporate law is just the next evolution of skulduggery: the criminals are the same, they just drive better cars.

Maybe I’m only the Watson after all.

don’t want to get too deep into the meaning-of-life crap, but when you’ve killed someone – sorry, when you’ve made the decision to kill someone – you’ve got to weigh it up. You know?

Lucy commits to the rhetoric; she describes it as a business and tenses up whenever anyone says that specific word. So out of respect, I won't use it. I'll just say the Egyptians built them.

It was easier to tell where my dad had been than to see where he was. The empty armchair in the living room. The plate in the oven. Stubble in the bathroom sink. Three empty holsters in a six-pack in the fridge. My father was footprints, residue.

I write how-to guides. You know - Ten easy steps to your first mystery; how to be an Amazon bestseller. That kind of thing. Oh, I get it, You write books about how to write books that you've never written, bought by people who will never write one

Milwaukee, Rebecca. Order and sobriety and a devotion to cleanliness that scours out the soul. Decent people doing their best to live decent lives, three's nothing really to hate them for, they do their jobs and maintain their property and love their children (most of the time); they take family vacations and visit relatives and decorate their houses for the holidays, collect some things and save up for other things; they're good people (most of them, most of the time), but if you were me, if you were young Pete Harris, you felt the modesty of it eroding you, depopulating you, all those little satisfactions and no big, dangerous ones; no heroism, no genius, no terrible yearning for anything you can't at least in theory actually have. If you were young lank-haired, pustule-plagued Pete Harris you felt like you were always about to expire from the safety of your life, its obdurate sensibleness, that Protestant love of the unexceptional; the eternal certainty of the faithful that flamboyance and the macabre are not just threatening but - worse - uninteresting.

Cassie, you need to understand that he only agreed to undergo treatment because of you. He made this choice solely for you, and no one else. Despite being aware of the limited time he has left and the financial burden the treatment will impose on his family, he chose to stay by your side.” I knew, had known the moment he’d agree to undergo the treatment. I hated myself for being the cause of his pain. He continued to push. “Xuan is doing the cancer therapy stuff even though he didn’t want to. He loves you that much. And because you asked him to do this, he is. And one day, because of love, you will stand by Xuan until the end and you’ll have to watch him die. And because he loved you, you will eventually have to let him go, because that’s what he would want.

Amy Cunningham, a funeral director in NY, ends a service, she purposefully tries to connect the grief of the family with that of mourners everywhere. She told me that she often ends her service by saying - 'May the source of peace grant you peace and grant peace to all who morn'. She connects this individual suffering to the larger existence of suffering in the world. Thereby making it both smaller and bigger.

Looking back, having been through trauma again as an adult (Go wait in the car), I can see another side to my mother’s actions back then. Because now I know that in the months after something so devastating, everything feels like sleepwalking. Life becomes a stuporous fulfillment of routine where even walking to the supermarket feels like you’re dragging your limbs through air as heavy as the Drying Room’s. Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them. It’s winding up in the kitchen without knowing why you went in there. It’s taking us to swim school on a Tuesday instead of tennis. It’s getting two haircuts, not because you’re busy, but because you forgot we went yesterday. Our routine was intended to keep us busy, sure, but the repetition was a comfort against the burden of decision-making. A burden that, I know now, our mother wore heavily.

Yes, Clarissa thinks, it’s time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Do you ever think? What? They were lying together on the sofa that had always been there, the crappy beat-up biscuit-colored sofa that was managing, as best it could, its promotion from threadbare junk to holy artifact. You know. What if I don't know? You fucking do. Okay, yeah. Yes. I, too, wonder if Dad worried so much about every single little goddamned thing . . . That he summoned it. Thanks. I couldn't say it. That some god or goddess heard him, one time too many, getting panicky about whether she'd been carjacked at the mall, or had, like, hair cancer . . . That they delivered the think even he couldn't imagine worrying about. It's not true. I know. But we're both thinking about it. That may have been their betrothal. That may have been when they took their vows: We are no longer siblings, we are mates, starship survivors, a two-man crew wandering the crags and crevices of a planet that may not be inhabited by anyone but us. We no longer need, or want, a father. Still, they really have to call him. It's been way too long.

New people rarely went there to live. The same families married the same families until relationships were hopelessly entangled and the members of the community looked monotonously alike. Jean Louise, until the Second World War, was related by blood or marriage to nearly everybody in the town, but this was mild compared to what went on in the northern half of Maycomb County: there was a community called Old Sarum populated by two families, separate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing the same name. The Cunninghams and the Coninghams married each other until the spelling of the names was academic—academic unless a Cunningham wished to jape with a Coningham over land titles and took to the law. The only time Jean Louise ever saw Judge Taylor at a dead standstill in open court was during a dispute of this kind. Jeems Cunningham testified that his mother spelled it Cunningham occasionally on deeds and things but she was really a Coningham, she was an uncertain speller, and she was given to looking far away sometimes when she sat on the front porch. After nine hours of listening to the vagaries of Old Sarum’s inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the case out of court on grounds of frivolous pleading and declared he hoped to God the litigants were satisfied by each having had his public say. They were. That was all they had wanted in the first place.

When the waiter left, I asked Xuan, “Have you ever wondered about God? Or religions other than your own?” “Most of my family is Buddhist. Growing up, every year my grandparents on my mother’s side organized a chaoshan jinxiang—what I think you know as a pilgrimage. We’d go to the city’s most important religious site, Miaofengshan, or the Mountain of the Wondrous Peak, which is considered one of the five holy mountains that match cardinal directions in geomancy. They still go yearly to pay their respects to the mountain and to present incense. Honestly, I’ve only stepped foot into one church in my life, and that was with my nǎi nai.” I knew nǎi nai meant “grandmother” in Chinese. “You did?” I asked, a little surprised. He’d never mentioned that. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I used to spend weekends at her house. She had a lot of paintings of Jesus, and a beautiful jade rosary. When I was young, she took me to a Catholic church, and I remember watching her as she asked God for several things and lit prayer candles. Nǎi nai believed a church was a place where dreams were realized. She told me to tell God my wishes and He would grant them. I remember what I said to her when she told me to make a wish.” Xuan offered an indulgent half smile. “Where is God, huh? Look around us. Look at all the bad things that happen in this world. God isn’t a genie, and a church isn’t a place for wishes to be granted. It’s a place for the lonely, sick, weak, and broken. It’s a place people go to not feel alone. But my nǎi nai still went back, every Sunday.” I continued watching Xuan, not quite sure where this conversation was going. I patiently waited for him to make his point. “I didn’t make any wishes that day. I had never made a wish or spoken to God until the night of the mudslide. But I remember, in Colombia, looking out onto the road and seeing your vehicle trapped, and silently I prayed. I’ll believe in you. So please... . save her. If you let her live, I’ll happily give up the rest of the time I have left alive. Take me and let Cassie live.

bald man with one of those folds above the back of his neck that I’ve always assumed he has to floss in case mold builds up.

and figuring out how best to frame this icy quest as possibly shag-worthy heroism.

He wrote a set of rules for detective fiction in 1929.

We all need people to protect us sometimes.” “And sometimes,” I say, stepping out of his grip, “we need the freedom to fight our own battles.

He seemed surprised to hear from me now, his tone holding a note of shock. “Saint, how are you? What can I do for you?” “Kenneth. I just heard about the new volunteer counselor. I was hoping to get a copy of his credentials. As you know, the situation with some of the kids is pretty tenuous and new people scare them,” I said. “Oh! Didn’t you know he was coming? He said he had been approved months ago but he had delayed his start date due to traveling out of state for a family death. His name is Roland Cunningham. He’s been a high school counselor for fifteen years and now he’s semi-retired and wants to give back. He says that he saw so many gay kids who needed an ear.” I rolled my eyes so hard I almost hurt myself and Rio frowned at me questioningly. I shook my head and pulled in one deep breath before I spoke. “No, he hasn’t been approved for months. I’ve never heard of him. I suspect he’s a spy who belongs to Clay Greene.” I could hear Kenneth suck air, then chuckle disbelievingly. “Oh, no, Saint. That’s impossible. He had a copy of a volunteer application that you signed and dated in January. You probably just forgot, I know you’ve had a lot on your mind with your sister and everything.” I heard him click his tongue and had to work to not reach through the phone and wring his neck. “He’s going to make sure the kids have someone else to talk to. Don’t worry about it, I’m taking care of everything.” Rio’s frown had morphed into mild alarm, and I wasn’t sure what my face was doing that was causing it but whatever it was must have been interesting. He edged closer as I took several deep breaths. “Kenneth. Listen to me. You need to be cautious. Have you seen the security reports from Mr. Rao? Did make sure you let him know about this Cunningham? Did you run the background check?” “I glanced through the reports, yes, but no, I didn’t tell him about Roland. Mr. Rao is the night guard and Roland is scheduled for afternoons.” He chuckled lightly. “I didn’t see the overlap.” I did not grind my teeth, but it was a near thing. Rio hovered, not touching me, which I was grateful for. Once I got off this phone I was going to go off. “What about the background check, Ken? You know the background check policy.” “Oh, yes,” Kenneth said. “We did the background check. Completely clean, exemplary record with several awards from his career. Really, you need to calm down. I have it all under control.” “Right,” I said. “Well, I’ll let you get back to it then, Ken. Thank you.” I hung up before Kenneth could reply and Rio looked at me warily. “I am going to have him kicked off the board so fast his fucking head is going to spin. Shouldn’t be too hard, it’s full of ball bearings and broken gravel,” I snarled. “So that didn’t go well,” Rio observed quietly. He was still hovering, clearly unsure of how best to handle me.

Just look at how they’ve treated you. And you still think you owe them? One day you’ll realize family isn’t about whose blood runs in your veins, it’s who you’d spill it for.

But age gives perspective, and now I know the difference between being popular and being talked about.

The Kennedys, those beneficiaries and victims of fate, Catholics with Anglican looks and pagan luck, tended to come up all the time back then. Their myth, their thing, hovered in the air over the campaign. The Senator reminded people of JFK, for one: he was handsome and spoke well and had a pretty family. And then, it felt good to see Camelot in a guy who wasn’t white.

Don’t you write these things?” “I write about writing these things.

she describes it as a business and tenses up whenever anyone says that specific word. So out of respect, I won’t use it. I’ll just say the Egyptians built them.

I don’t really know. I’ve never buried a body before.

all did.’ Her voice was venom. ‘If only he’d left us a weapon to fight it with. But he didn’t. Nothing in the bank. And you did the same thing to Michael.

Life becomes a stuporous fulfillment of routine where even walking to the supermarket feels like you’re dragging your limbs through air as heavy as the Drying Room’s. Every basic task starts to feel like a decision, and that becomes so draining that you end up unable to make any of them.

I’m guessing, Sofia, that you’re a high-functioning addict. After all, you continued to work, even operate

Я вважав її популярною, бо про неї говорили на родинних барбекю, коли вона не могла прийти. Але з віком на все дивишся трохи по-іншому, тож із часом я зрозумів, що, коли про тебе постійно згадують, це ще не означає, що ти популярний.

Одного дня ти збагнеш, що родина — це не ті, чия кров тече у твоїх жилах, а ті, заради кого ти її проливаєш.

У фільмах жахів люди помирають, коли розділяються, але в горах усе інакше: вони помирають, коли кидаються шукати одне одного.

All I can hope for, when I die, is to be a buzzing topic of conversation over breakfast.

There’s no blaze of glory in dying in a gunfight with police. It wasn’t a brave death, a death to be proud of. It was a death to be forgotten

Erin’s request to stay with me had been borne out of loneliness and fear, not flirtation, and so there was never any expectation that I would head up the ladder with her. There are no sex scenes in this book.

Robert could justify anything. The way every robbery was the big ticket, the last one. He talked himself into absolution, too.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

Policymakers are becoming aware that eliminating poverty and protecting our common environment are inextricably interlinked, because the world’s poorest people are both victims and agents of environmental degradation. The poorest people are often forced to meet short-term survival needs at the cost of long-term sustainability. Desperate for croplands to feed their families, and for fuel, many clear forests or cultivate steep hillsides, where soil is rapidly eroded. Others migrate to the crowded shantytowns that surround most major cities in the developing world.

Там стояла група людей, лише деякі з них були зі мною однієї крові і ще менше носили моє прізвище. Вони чекали на мене. Колекція дефісів, префіксів, шлюбних прізвищ, колишній той-то, прийомний того-то. А поряд зі мною лежав і боровся за життя ще один Каннінгем. Мені так хотілося жити сім'єю, змусити Ерін, щоб вона подарувала мені дитину, що я забув про сім'ю, яка вже була в мене. Тепер я зрозумів слова, які сказала Софія на початку цієї історії. Сім'я – це не ті люди, кров яких тече у твоїх венах, це ті, за кого ти готовий пролити свою.

Ви пишете книги про те, як писати книги, які самі ніколи не писали і які купують люди, які ніколи нічого не напишуть.

- Хочеш піднятися сходами? Я розумів, що бажання близькості у неї – це реакція на смерть Майкла. Знав, що все буде фальшивим і порожнім, а вранці заново нахлине біль. Я знав усе це, але лежав на своєму дивані і не наважувався відповісти. – Найбільше в світі, – нарешті промовив я. – Але не думаю, що це зроблю.

some vegetables are supposed to stay in the dirt and shouldn't be eaten at all.

I'm pretty much awake now." (P) "The last time I said that, I passed out in the bathtub." (I) "I remember that. Neil covered you with towels and said that he found a mermaid." (P) "You were so beautiful, Mummy. Like Ice Bird when he freezes the pigs." (N) "Thank you, sweet." -- Ingrid, Paul and Neil.

Our job as parents is to raise children who love Jesus and leave home as responsible adults. We prepare them for a lifetime of following Christ, working hard, being married, and raising a family. When kids spend their childhood years fulfilling Mom and Dad’s desires and dreams, they lose out on discovering who God created them to be and what He has prepared for them to do. When parents push their personal agendas, the kids miss out on identifying their God-given personality, passions, and spiritual gifts.

Roddy outgunned Cunningham in the brain department. He hung

It was a day of new beginnings. A day of hope.

A nation cannot thrive if people decide to create their own rules,

Marriage and family therapist Ryan Pannell defines prolonged adolescence as having too much privilege and not enough responsibility.