Muriel Spark

I was just as anxious to prevent injustice as to cause justice.

— Muriel Spark

“Oh" she says "the inconceivable sorrow of it, those chairs piled up at night when you're sitting in a cafè. The last…

— Muriel Spark

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art…

— Muriel Spark

It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while…

— Muriel Spark

“It is not because we are rats that we tend to abandon people who are down, it is because we are embarrassed.”

— Muriel Spark

“If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death.…

— Muriel Spark

I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends.

— Muriel Spark

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

— Muriel Spark

The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me…

— Muriel Spark

“after thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that collie had a habit of skipping several…

— Muriel Spark

everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.

— Muriel Spark

“Sex is all right” he says “It’s all right at the time, and it’s all right before” says Lise, “but the problem…

— Muriel Spark

No medicine man these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder. Without the aid of this modern device, which…

— Muriel Spark

Looking forward to going home, I was necessarily looking backward.

— Muriel Spark

Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first

— Muriel Spark

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in…

— Muriel Spark

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of…

— Muriel Spark

Beware of men bearing flowers.

— Muriel Spark

“Sandy felt warmly towards Miss Brodie at these times when she saw how she was misled in her idea of Rose. It…

— Muriel Spark

I have a great desire to make people smile - not laugh. Laughter is too aggressive. People bare their teeth.

— Muriel Spark

People who quoted the Scriptures in criticism of others were terrible bores and usually they misapplied the text. One could prove anything…

— Muriel Spark

we have invented sex guilt to take our minds off the real thing.

— Muriel Spark

“you're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of it's own. We do miss what we…

— Muriel Spark

“Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life.”

— Muriel Spark

I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.

— Muriel Spark