Quotes from Iris Murdoch

I cannot now remember the exact sequence of events in those prehistoric years. That we cannot remember such things, that our memory, which is our self, is tiny, limited and fallible, is also one of those important things about us, like our inwardness and our reason. Indeed it is the very essence of both.

If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives.

If I could only pray, he thought, if there was only some reservoir of force out of which I could draw something extra.

She could have a good career. She could be secretary to some interesting man.' 'I don't want her to be secretary to some interesting man,' said Mor, 'I want her to be an interesting woman and have someone else be her secretary.

She began to feel that if there had ever been a bus she had by now certainly missed it.

There's little enough love in the world. Why do you want to kill mine?

One can't whistle up happiness. It's a gift of nature and I haven't got it.

Being in love has its own self-certifying universality, it informs and glorifies the world with an energy which, like a drug, becomes a necessity of consciousness. Without it, the scene is dark, without that throbbing communication, dead. A mad state, perhaps an undesirable one, inimical to justice, benevolence, common sense. But, for its slaves, it justifies itself as, for the ordinary unsaintly man, nothing else ever does.

Ludens thought, why can't I do that, why can't I just ask a woman to hold my hand, why can't I ask Franca to!

I wonder if this is the end, thought Ducane, and if so what it will all have amounted to. How tawdry and small it has all been.

In the clairvoyance of this despair he had seen how much his folly had already damaged both of them.

I'm not a lucky person who makes radiant decisions which are obviously right.

He knew the vulnerability of his strength.

There had been anguish, fear, indecision, then gradually the brightness of her presence cast beforehand, obliterating all else. Then I was with her and there was strange blankness, and utter calm of delight. Suddenly, down into the furthest crannies of being all was well. It was all so strangely simple too, with a blameless simplicity as of childhood.

Love is the only justice.

He wanted to take her in his arms, he wanted to be utterly revealed to her, he wanted her to understand.

When I am told that a person is happy,' said Nick, 'I know that he is not. Of really happy people this is never said.

One knows what being in love is like and it is a very terrible thing.

He . . . felt as if, wanting to be needed by everyone, he were merely becoming some sort of semi-invisible messenger.

Religion is having an intense attitude and no time off... religion is about those awful deep things.

She would give ease to his too long wandering heart, and then he could live more fully in the world of other people, more able, because more happy, to give them his full attention.

Perhaps after all not to have been born is best. How near the human soul must be to nothingness if it can be so tossed.

The dread enactment of the dream had turned into a waking horror.

I think we belong to each other.