“As soon as any idea is a consolation the tendency to falsify it becomes strong: hence the traditional problem of preventing the… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
we are such inward secret creatures, that inwardness the most amazing thing about us, even more amazing than our reason. but we… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious to my surroundings, brooding perhaps on… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Education doesn’t make you happy. Nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we’re free – if we are. Or because… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“The idea of attention or contemplation, of looking carefully at something and holding it before the mind, may be conveyed early on… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
any writer is inevitably going to work with his own anxieties and desires. If the book is any good it has got… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“I’m afraid you’re all mixed up in my mind,’ I said. ‘I wonder where they are now –’ ‘Married.’ She spoke it… — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“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 Image
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
being homosexual doesn't determine a man's whole character any more than being heterosexual does. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
All artists dream of a silence which they must enter, as some creatures return to the sea to spawn. — Iris Murdoch Copy Share Image
“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 Image
