I know that human life is horrible. I know that it is utterly unlike art. I have no religion except my own task of being. Conventional religions are dream stuff. Always a world of fear and horror lies but a millimetre away. Any man, even the greatest, can be broken in a moment and has no refuge. Any theory which denies this is a lie.

— Iris Murdoch

Iris Murdoch Quotes

A really malicious letter should be read once only and destroyed, or best of all not read at all. These things lodge in the mind.

— Iris Murdoch

Of course you don’t know yourself, lucky old you. I just know myself too bloody well.

— Iris Murdoch

It’s much better that I should read the letter. Otherwise I shall be endlessly wondering what was in it.

— Iris Murdoch

His peace depends on seeing me as unattainable, as an angel. It will hurt terribly when it turns out that I am only a woman after all.

— Iris Murdoch

Little pictures out of hell.

— Iris Murdoch

I have never been more sane, coldly sane, self-interestedly sane. I am a woman.

— Iris Murdoch

Bereavement is my occupation and it absorbs me completely. You want me to touch you, to look at you with sympathy. I cannot.

— Iris Murdoch

A versatile Bohemianism had rendered him classless.

— Iris Murdoch

She had made some sort of life-mistake which meant that everything would grow worse and never better.

— Iris Murdoch

He was conscious of his body as a heavy cold horrible container. He had the feeling, coming to him as the memory of a dream, of being a prisoner waiting to be tortured. The extremity of pain was yet to come. And even now he was denied to comfort of self-pitying misery and warm tears.

— Iris Murdoch

Marriage is brainwashing. Not necessarily a bad thing. Your brain could do with a wash.

— Iris Murdoch

Today we will read love poetry. You shall read aloud to me and we will weep together.

— Iris Murdoch

Anyway, as you say, what the hell. I know, I’ve been to hell, I’ve seen it, I’ve been shown round. I’ll kill myself. You’ll see, you’ll be sorry.

— Iris Murdoch

I’m sorry I was awful. I’m so full of terrors.

— Iris Murdoch

It’s all someone else’s secret.

— Iris Murdoch

But suicides are mysterious, and one must respect their mystery.

— Iris Murdoch

Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.

— Iris Murdoch

He is crammed full of rage and hate and desire for revenge.

— Iris Murdoch

He was capable of hurting Ludens even to the point sometimes of deliberate malice.

— Iris Murdoch

There’s only one thing the matter and that’s everything.

— Iris Murdoch
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