Books Quotes by Iris Murdoch

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

— Iris Murdoch

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.

— Iris Murdoch

“I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time.”

— Iris Murdoch

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

— Iris Murdoch

The sending of a letter constitutes a magical grasp upon the future.

— Iris Murdoch

emotions really exist at the bottom of the personality or at the top. in the middle they are acted. this is why all the…

— Iris Murdoch

I have used the word "attention," which I borrow from Simone Weil, to express the idea of a just and loving gaze directed upon…

— Iris Murdoch

Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and…

— Iris Murdoch

Art and morality are, with certain provisos…one. Their essence is the same. The essence of both of them is love. Love is the perception…

— Iris Murdoch

being homosexual doesn't determine a man's whole character any more than being heterosexual does.

— Iris Murdoch

All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn.

— Iris Murdoch

“Oh if only I could take my mother away and never know of these things again. But it was impossible, the machine would go…

— Iris Murdoch

We defend ourselves by descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.

— Iris Murdoch

“I'm sorry I was awful. I'm so full of terrors.”

— Iris Murdoch

I live, I live, with an absolutely continuous sense of failure. I am always defeated, always. Every book is the wreck of a perfect…

— Iris Murdoch