Quotes from Iris Murdoch

This figure, which I had so vaguely, idly, noticed before was now utterly changed in my eyes. The whole world was its background. And between me and it there hovered, perhaps for the last time, the vision of a slim long-legged girl with gleaming thighs. I ran.

Sentimentally and in the soul it went on for ages, it still goes on, it goes on and on.

It might be most dramatically effective to begin the tale at the moment when Arnold Baffin rang me up and said, Bradley, could you come round here please, I think I have just killed my wife.

You mustn't mind so much. It's all in your head. Well, I live in my head.

The whole extraordinary business was over. And I was back where I belonged, where my childhood had condemned me to be, alone, out in the cold without a coat.

While the light remains,' said Carde, speaking slowly in his high deliberate voice, 'only do not forsake the joy of life. If you shall have given all your kisses, you will give too few. And as leaves fall from withered wreaths which you may see spread upon the cups and floating there, so for us, who now as lovers hope for so much, perhaps tomorrow's day will close the doom.

But I can't do anything for him and he can't do anything for me. We must wail in our own corners.

Then the front doorbell (already too long delayed by my rambling narrative) rang.

There are special nightmares for the daytime sleeper: little nervous dreams tossed into some brief restless moments of unconsciousness and breaking through the surface of the mind to become confused at once with the horror of some waking vision. Such are these awakenings, like an awakening in the grave, when one opens one's eyes, stretched out rigid with clenched hands, waiting for some misery to declare itself; but for a long time it lies to suffocation upon the chest and utters no word.

Oh God, that conversation last night or this morning or whenever that devil-ridden scrap of nightmare had been. How could two rational beings go on and on simply saying the same awful things to each other week after week, month after month?

I believe that unfulfilled frustrated people probably spend a lot of their lives in pure fantasy-dreaming. This can I am sure be a great source of consolation though not always harmless.

You get so worked up and flowery! You sound as if you were quoting something all the time!

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!

Oh what an ill fate it was that has made me love that man.

Some people are just 'diminishers' and 'spoilers' for others. I suppose almost everybody diminishes someone. A saint would be nobody's spoiler.

He dreamt...he was a huge white egg floating in the sea of turquoise blue, and he was everything that there was.

I have always attributed a great importance to eyes. How mysteriously expressive those damp orbs can be; the eyeball does not change and yet it is the window of the soul. And colour in eyes is, in its nature and inherence, quite unlike colour in any other substance. Mr Osmand had grey eyes, but his eyes were hard and speckled like Aberdeen granite, while Tommy's were clear and empty like light smoke.

I lead a worthless life, he thought, I live in unreality and untruth. If only there could be total change, regeneration, escape. If only I could run and run and get back to the people, back to where real wholesome, ordinary life is being lived. I have given myself a mean role and cannot now stop enacting it. Oh if only I could get out! But even as he thought these familiar thoughts he knew: unreality is my reality, untruth is my truth, I am too old now and I have no other way.

Their hands touched, their knees touched. They were both trembling.

He was not notably vertebrate and could hardly look after himself, so how could he look after Crystal?

There are moments when, if one rejects the simple and obvious promptings of duty, one finds oneself in a labyrinth of complexities of some quite new kind.

I know girls aren't supposed to tell, but I've got to tell—just in case you should fail to love me because you never knew how much I loved you. I want not to have to say later—I wish I'd told him.

I want you to be able to see me, and as my love for you is so much of me (all of me, making me more than myself) then you must see that too.

I'm not interested. I never liked him. He's some sort scoundrel.