Quotes from Iris Murdoch

If only there were not these vain ghostly hopes, these sudden inane shadows of possibilities, these unfulfilled conditionals of hopeless desire.

I must have been changing though, and becoming, though I didn't know it, what I am now. I can't have become all this, and there's really a lot of it, in a few days, can I?

One reward of living in hell is a certain kind of courage. I do not fear anything, certainly not morality, or your foul fantasies either.

She stood there awkwardly, incapable of further theatre.

On this diet of expectation, he had fairly frenzied himself by the time he arrived.

A talent for oblivion is a talent for survival. I laid my head down and merciful pain-killing sleep covered me fathoms deep. Not to have been born is undoubtedly best, but sound sleep is second best.

Mary thought suddenly, this is an abomination, sitting here and having this conventional conversation when I feel so desperate and deprived and torn inside. She thought, is there nothing I can do about it?

Only the curve of her nostril and the curve of her mouth hinted, with a Jewish strength, a possible Jewish refinement.

Happiness is a matter of one's most ordinary mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.

How can one discover what he feels? I thought he might perhaps behave — quite differently with you? No, no. We seem to know each other well but I think that's just because I parade my feelings. He's affectionate, detached, passive, absolutely passive. He's never told you about that place? He's never talked about himself at all.

You are always wanting other people to act in some drama which you have invented.

Even now I shake and tremble as I write. Memory is too weak a name for this terrible evocation. Oh Hartley, Hartley, how timeless, how absolute love is. My love for you is unaware that I am old and you perhaps are dead.

It is particularly hard to overcome resentment caused by injustice. And I was so lonely. The bottomless bitter misery of childhood : how little even now it is understood. Probably no adult misery can be compared with a child's despair.

I told you I was going to retire from the world. That's still on. You remember that.

I know how he is . . . and I can see he's not a convenient man to be in love with.

Arnold's 'joke' was too obscenely good not to be taken as a portent: it was the visible part of some huge invisible horror.

I've almost finished The Republic. I find Plato at times a vile casuist, and almost always a reactionary. But he does write exquisite Greek.

Settle down! she thought. Yes, settle down into dreariness and quietness and forgetfulness and boredom.

Every manjack craving for love, and how rarely it all worked out.

He thought, this is hell, not being able to live with oneself.

Tuesday? My whole concept of the future had crumpled.

Priscilla is in hell. Well, we all are. Life is torture, consciousness is torture. All our little devices are just morphia to stop us from screaming . . . We're each of us screaming away in our own private padded cell.

Yet she knew that it was not really the sharp tragic knife of passion that disturbed her now, it was some vaguer nervous storm out of her unsatisfied woman's nature.

In so far as there were mysteries and depths in my life I kept them secret from Christ and his soldiery. I was more moved by animals than I was by Jesus.