Quotes from Iris Murdoch

David, que se disponía a correr su cortina contra el oscuro crepúsculo, se detuvo y clavó la vista en el jardín. El chico estaba de pie bajo la acacia, en la parte más cercana de la verja que separaba el jardín de Hood House del huerto. La figura estaba tan quieta y

It was a voyage into the absurd.

But I wanted to make what was terrible so much worse so as to be sure that it was fatal; like Hartley protecting herself by thinking I must hate her.

Bellamy thought, he is beginning to avoid me, my presence embarrasses him, my problems irritate him. I am becoming an unperson.

We are conditioned beings who salivate when the bell rings. This sheer conditioning is another of our most characteristic dooms. Anything can be tarnished by association, and if you have enough associations you can blacken the world.

Starting this relationship seems to me one of the better things you've ever done, however it ends. We can't separate it from how it ends.

Perhaps it was a case of time overflowing.

Words may mislead us (...) since words are often stable while concepts alter (...)

The only cure here was death. They were both gone out of my life.

Moreover, and of course, she loved him; but in Sefton's stern code her love had always been chained up, and howled fruitlessly, as indeed it did now.

I'll look after you, I'll go with you anywhere, I won't ever leave you.

Come in, defeat, come in and make yourself at home.

I believe in you so much that you must do what I want.

Why can't you live in the present? You live everywhere but in the present.

David, que se disponía a correr su cortina contra el oscuro crepúsculo, se detuvo y clavó la vista en el jardín. El chico estaba de pie bajo la acacia, en la parte

How can I even think of such a fate . . . Better to commit murder.

In the torpor of the afternoon the remembered road had the slightly menacing and elusive familiarity of a place in a dream when one thinks: I have been here, yet where is it and what is going to happen?

You are heroic, Mr. Lynch-Gibbon. The knight of infinite humiliation. One does not know whether to kiss your feet or to recommend that you have a good analysis. She said it as one might say a good thrashing.

And she looked back out of her sallow Jewish mask, the line of her mouth dead straight between the curving lips, the narrow eyes black.

He is endowed with an Irish flow of words, and when thoroughly drunk is difficult to interrupt.

Never swim in a rough sea, dear boy, this sea's a killer. But the past refused to come back, as it did in dreams, to be remade. Titus walked in my dreams in the brightness of his youth, which was now made eternal. Or else I dreamed that he was dead and felt joy on waking.

His sudden decision not to see her any more was utterly incomprehensible to the girl, it was a death sentence from a hidden authority for an unknown crime. Nothing had changed, and then there was suddenly this.

Good-bye to the past, with its mysteries which would never be fully unfolded.

one often feels guilt not because one has sinned but because one has been accused!