1,162 Quotes by Iris Murdoch

She did not want to be as before. She wanted great changes in her life.

They haven't been standing still in the past.

The new world, he thought, the new life, and how sad it is. I suppose I should be congratulating myself, it may even be that later I shall look back on this as heaven.

I must have been changing though, and becoming, though I didn't know it, what I am now. I can't have become all this, and there's really a lot of it, in a few days, can I?

The best you can hope for is a little peace and not too much remorse. Thoughts at peace under an English heaven.

Εγώ δεν μπορώ να καταλάβω πως είναι δυνατό να είναι κανείς καλλιτέχνης και να μην προσπαθεί συνεχώς να γίνει τέλειος.

While the light remains,' said Carde, speaking slowly in his high deliberate voice, 'only do not forsake the joy of life. If you shall have given all your kisses, you will give too few. And as leaves fall from withered wreaths which you may see spread upon the cups and floating there, so for us, who now as lovers hope for so much, perhaps tomorrow's day will close the doom.

I hate solitude, but I'm afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.

. . . none of these things had really got to happen at all, since she could prevent them. The power of pure destruction was still hers. She could still make it death or glory.