Quotes from Iris Murdoch

There were many people . . . who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls. Work, as it now is, . . . can rarely offer satisfaction to the half-contemplative.

What a mystery a marriage was. What a strange and violent world, the world of matrimony. I was glad to be outside it. The idea of it filled me with a sort of queasy pity.

enjoying literature as those alone enjoy it who have little else to enjoy.

Is that a quotation? Only from me.

You said you were having fun. Well, yes and no, strictly speaking I was in hell. Perhaps I have always been there. One can have fun in hell.

There were many people, she said, and Michael was but too ready to credit her since he felt himself to be one of them, who can live neither in the world nor out of it. They are a kind of sick people, whose desire for God makes them unsatisfactory citizens of an ordinary life, but whose strength or temperament fails them to surrender the world completely; and present-day society, with its hurried pace and its mechanical and technical structure, offers no home to these unhappy souls.

She had the instinctive generosity of the thoroughly lucky person.

I think one should pay so much attention to technique, don't you? Like learning to draw before you paint.

Can one, in such a self-portrait, omit something which affected one's whole being and which one has thought of every day of one's life? 'Every day' exaggerates, but not much. I do not need to 'recall' Hartley, she is here. She is my end and my beginning, she is alpha and omega.

The past is gone, it doesn't exist any more.

Where do they come from, these tears?

Ordinary consciousness simply becomes pain.

I remained, leaning a little on her shoulder, my cheek touching her crown of golden hair. It was fading into grey. One day, without having noticed the transition, I would see that it was gold no longer.

The book is quite serious and quite funny. (Most novels are.)

Yes of course I was in love with my own youth. Aunt Estelle? Not really. Who is one's first love?

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.

Was it that he had lived too long in his mind and was tired of the scenery?

We all live in the interstices of each other's lives, and we would all get a surprise if we could see everything.

My first love, and also my only love. All the best, even Clement, have been shadows by comparison. The necessity of this seems, in my own case, so great that I find it hard to imagine that it is not so with everyone.

She's also in love with the 'Polish Rider'. Who's he? A picture by Rembrandt.

It's just one of the wonders of the world.

Curiously watched by people in neighbouring cars, she abandoned herself to sobbing as the taxi crawled slowly through the north London traffic.

Everyone here seems to have some weird secret or other.

This was everything that I wanted to be done with, the relaxed banality of life without goals.