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What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.

Iris Murdoch

To lose somebody is to lose not only their person but all those modes and manifestations into which their person has flowed outwards; so that in losing a beloved one may find so many things, pictures, poems, melodies, places lost too: Dante, Avignon, a song of Shakespeare’s, the Cornish sea.
IRIS MURDOCH

Lose Person Photograph Poem Sea
How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Death Different Pursue See Worth
Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.
IRIS MURDOCH

Book Ideas Perfection
One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.
IRIS MURDOCH

Easy Lie Oneself People
Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.
IRIS MURDOCH

Distance Ourselves People
The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.
IRIS MURDOCH

Education Fundamental Human Literature Understand
Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
IRIS MURDOCH

Determination Eyes Herself Hope
People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don’t admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It’s the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.
IRIS MURDOCH

Character. Priviledge Fear Myself Passion People Thinking
Guilt keeps people imprisoned in themselves.
IRIS MURDOCH

Guilty One Liner People Prison
We can only learn to love by loving.
IRIS MURDOCH

Learning Love
Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
IRIS MURDOCH

Crime Sin Spiritual
Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.
IRIS MURDOCH

Book Feeling Start Yourself
Every persisting marriage is based on fear’, said Peregrine. ‘Fear is fundamental, you dig down in human nature and what’s at the bottom? Mean spiteful cruel self-regarding fear, whether it makes you to put the foot in it or whether it makes you to cower.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fear Fundamental Human Marriage Nature
An experience is richest not talked of.
IRIS MURDOCH

Experience Rich
Anything that consoles is fake.
IRIS MURDOCH

Fake One Liner
Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.
IRIS MURDOCH

Greatness Past Truth Word

What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.

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What I needed with all my starved and silent soul was just that particular way of shouting back at the world.

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Popular Authors

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