Quotes from Iris Murdoch

Mary held her heart, contracted into a point of agony.

I felt such a stranger there, like a poor lodger. One must be with one's own people.

A man who's as sick as Bruno can't be philosophical.

She felt above all, as a sort of categorical imperative, the desire to set Hannah free, to smash up all her eerie magical surroundings, to let the fresh air in at last; even if the result should be some dreadful suffering.

I felt a tenderness for her that was deep and pure, a miracle of love preserved. How clear it flowed, that fountain from the far past. Yes, we must quietly collect our past, collect it up with tacit understanding, without any intensity or drama, blaming and exonerating ourselves with a difference. And how wonderfully possible it seemed, this silent process of redemption

They haven't been standing still in the past.

Everyone says how wonderful it is to be young. I've never seen it.

By 1993 Murdoch was becoming reluctant to engage in public activities and dreaded giving interviews. These late letters increasingly evidence the language difficulties and amnesia that, in retrospect, suggest the progression of Alzheimer's disease, although the condition remained undiagnosed until 1997.

I am enjoying seeing and learning things here, though I don't 'like' the place in a way. It makes me feel such a decadent sybaritic old European. I leave Yale on Friday, go to Boston, Washington and back to New York – and sail on Nov 4.

Michael could hear him yawning. At last he said, 'That cider has made me quite sleepy.' 'Well, go to sleep then,' said Michael. 'Oh, no,' said Toby. 'I'm not as sleepy as all that.' In a few minutes he was asleep.

The mysterious awful changes which alter the human face from youth to age may gently dally and delay, then act decisively all at once.

It was odd, the life one lived in other people's dreams.

By a dialectic well known to those who habitually succumb to temptation he passed in a second from the time when it was too early to struggle to the time when it was too late to struggle.

Moy felt something snap inside her as if her heart had snapped. The heart-string, she thought — what is the heart-string?

Sometimes he felt like a victim constantly revived in order to suffer more.

Partly, I still felt something of the sheer unholy excitement which I had experienced initially at the thought of a friend (especially this one) in trouble.

Well, it's such an adventure we shall talk about it forever!

You have sometimes thought of going back? Yes, I have, but only in a fantasy way.

The conversation in the Old Brompton Road was more like an experience of the inferno, but lovers are accustomed to fire.

The young are self-satisfied really and utterly ruthless.

Her short straight oily hair, a lustrous black, sat like a cropped wig about her pale rather waxen Jewish face.

Henry's joy left him abruptly and he began anxiously to think about himself.

Murdoch was now in great academic and public demand. Despite having been diagnosed as partially deaf with Ménière's disease, an incurable affliction of the inner ear, she gave many lectures and interviews, as well as visiting Yale University in October 1959.

But her heart was hurting her with its violence.