Quotes from Muriel Spark

I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work.

From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be: 'Beware of any man bringing flowers.

The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion.

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.

We often laughed at others in our house, and I picked up the craft of being polite while people were present and laughing later if there was anything to laugh about.

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

I used to think it a pity that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control.

Interviews can be stimulating. It depends on the intelligence of the interviewer.

Jealousy ... is an affliction of the spirit which, unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.

I have a great desire to make people smile - not laugh. Laughter is too aggressive. People bare their teeth.

Every communist has a fascist frown, every fascist a communist smile.

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.

I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

If you choose the sort of life which has no conventional pattern you have to try to make an art of it, or it is a mess.

All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic.

everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.

There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce.

I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.