“It had occurred, it had happened , and could never in his life be unhappened, never removed, a huge deadly black scar lasting forever.” — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share
One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share
“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 Copy Share
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
being homosexual doesn't determine a man's whole character any more than being heterosexual does. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share
All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share
“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 Copy Share
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 Copy Share
