Quotes from Iris Murdoch

I'd like to to know what it is he's after, I mean, is it an experience or a thought, is it something you'd put in a book, or die for, or die of?

I think Otto will be rather relieved to be certain that you know. He doesn't enjoy deception. I choose the words carefully. He hasn't the least objection to deception. He just doesn't like the process of being found out. It's bad for his nerves

But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly .

Yes, my mother was on about Byron. But who wants to be like Byron? I despise him.

You can go now. There's nothing more to learn. I am poured out and empty. Good night.

Yes, I am free, she said to herself, but it's not like ordinary freedom, it's being in hell, a brilliant lucid hell.

Suffering is no scandal. It is natural. Nature appoints it. All creation suffers. It suffers from having been created, if from nothing else. It suffers from being divided from God.

Don't be hurt by me. I can't help being hurt —

She had inhibited her sympathy, one genuine sympathetic impulse would have ruined her.

Of course Paula had revealed her trouble to no one. She preserved it in her private heart like the awful bloody arcana of a mystical religion.

I'm as lonely as a lunatic.

Time had never been visible to him before.

So. The door was open into the dark and he had but to walk through it.

And what an intense heavenly blue the sea is, not a dark blue at all, but like a cauldron of light.

Ludens was continually aware of his father's distress.

Village life can be terribly unpeaceful!

He saw moving pictures. It was not quite like remembering.

For a while everything became too terrible, one could scarcely bear to be conscious.

He must play the game of survival until the very end.

I love you, I want you, I'd die for you —

It is necessary at this point to recount what actually occurred, as opposed to what was generally supposed to have occurred, on that terrible evening when Lucas killed a man.

Lucas continued, speaking pensively in a dreamy tone, The painters, you know, the painters, what they did for Christianity!

I went on seeing him, but it was like acting in some nightmarish play.

I can't quite believe he has actually left this scene, left our lives, wherein he was always so significant!