1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

With a fluency that amazed me lies and treachery streamed from my lips. I was in extreme pain.

We are clay and nothing is real for us except the uncanny womb of Being into which we shall return.

Your coldness has ruined my life. All right, you didn't mean it, all right I was a schoolgirl, but you could have been kinder to someone who said they loved you, you could have been gentle and grateful.

How little thought he had given to her since, how little imagination of her feelings — and after the great honour which she had done him. She had offered him herself and said she loved him.

And could it be true without other awful things being true as well?

Why after two years at that university, he left to study sociology in Birmingham, no one knew clearly. He suddenly, as he said, 'couldn't stand Cambridge'. He wanted to get closer to something — perhaps life. But life continued to reject him.

Bellamy thought, he is beginning to avoid me, my presence embarrasses him, my problems irritate him. I am becoming an unperson.

Here I am, after all, welcome home, I'm yours. To which Henry replied: When I wanted you you were not mine, when I needed you you rejected me. Why should I cherish you now?

How sad for those who cannot enjoy what are after all prime pleasures of daily life, and perhaps for some the only ones, eating and drinking.