“One illusion is as good as another.”

Women sometimes seem to share a quiet, unalterable dogma of persecution that endows even the most sophisticated of them with the inarticulate poignancy of the peasant.

They hadn’t much faith in travel, nor a great belief in a change of scene as a panacea for spiritual ills; they were simply glad to be going.

By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future.

Anything incomprehensible has a sexual significance to many people under thirty-five.

She quietly expected great things to happen to her, and no doubt that’s one of the reasons why they did.

It’s terrible to allow conventional habits to gain a hold on a whole household; to eat, sleep and live by clock ticks.

Something in me vibrates to a dusky, dreamy smell of dying moons and shadows.

Why is there happiness and comfort and excitement where you are and no where else in the world.

Pronunciation has made many an innocent word sound like a doctor’s orders for a stomach pump.

Experience teaches you how to do things you never want to do again.

Oh, the secret life of man and woman–dreaming how much better we would be than we are if we were somebody else or even ourselves, and feeling that our estate has been unexploited to its fullest.

Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let’s think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow.

Love is bitter and all there is, and that the rest is for the emotional beggars of the earth.

Isn’t it funny how danger makes people passionate?

Don’t you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered – and I was delivered to you – to be worn. I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a buttonhole bouquet.

It is the loose ends with which men hang themselves.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts.

We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality says Iris Murdoch. But given the state of the world, is it wise?

A problem ignored, has two outcomes. The illusion that it is gone, and the reality of one problem becoming more.

Time is the real illusion.

We’re here to awaken from the illusion of separateness

There is nothing fast or easy about diplomacy. I have no illusions about that.

All spiritual practices are illusions created by illusionists to escape illusion.

It’s all real and it’s all illusory: that’s awareness.