1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

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.

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

I've somehow run myself into hell. There must be many entrances.

Sometimes I felt I would die by wishing it when I went to sleep but I always woke up again and found I was still there. Every morning finding I'm still me, that's hell.""Well, get out of hell then! The gate's open and I'm holding it!""I can't. I'm hell, myself.

Extreme continuing unhappiness often consoles itself with images of death which may in a sense be idle, but which can play a vital part in consolation and also in the continuance of illusion. If that happens I am dead, consoles, and also dulls the edge of speculation and even of conscience. It is another way of saying, to me that cannot happen.

That too was part of a machine from which she had not, for all her 'feelings' and her 'principles', the spirit or the courage really to escape.

Anyway, as you say, what the hell. I know, I've been to hell, I've seen it, I've been shown round. I'll kill myself. You'll see, you'll be sorry.

Mercifully one forgets one's love affairs as one forgets one's dreams.

Anyway people never fall in love suddenly like that except in novels.