One should go easy on smashing other people’s lies. Better to concentrate on one’s own.
IRIS MURDOCHPeople 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.
More Iris Murdoch Quotes
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Love doesn’t think like that. All right, it’s blind as a bat- Bats have radar. Yours doesnt seem to be working.
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I feel I’m at the end of something – everything is going to be different – and terrible.
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For most of us, for almost all of us, truth can be attained, if at all, only in silence. It is in silence that the human spirit touches the divine.
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People have disappointed me and deceived me and let me down.
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I don’t think I can marry, I’m not fit for it, I’m not real enough. That’s the trouble. I’m a puppet that’s realised what’s wrong with itself and it’s horrible. I’m propped up somewhere all alone, watching the real people go past. I’m propped up crying in a corner.
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Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.
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I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move.
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That doesn’t sound like you, you ride every wave. There is one that will drown me
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Youth is a marvelous garment.
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Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.
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I’ve been so unhappy for years, so unhappy, I don’t understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.
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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.
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Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
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The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man. Other forms of transport grow daily more nightmarish. Only the bicycle remains pure in heart.
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Our actions are like ships which we may watch set out to sea, and not know when or with what cargo they will return to port.
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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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There is a gulf fixed between those who can sleep and those who cannot. It is one of the greatest divisions of the human race.
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Coffee, unless it is very good and made by somebody else, is pretty intolerable at any time.
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Of course reading and thinking are important but, my God, food is important too.
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Her eyes, which refused to meet mine, had the defensive coldness of those who are determined to lose hope.
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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.
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Perhaps there was an intimacy which did not need words.
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Hegel says that Truth is a great word and the thing is greater still. With Dave we never seemed to get past the word.
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Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved.
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We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing.
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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