Iris Murdoch Quotes

“He was glad that he had expressed to her, however blunderingly, what he felt. He was glad that he had held her hand.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Your coldness has ruined my life. All right, you didn't mean it, all right I was a schoolgirl, but you could have been kinder to someone who said they loved you, you could have been gentle and grateful.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“The unspoken words trembled in the air.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“I need daylight. But I wander in the dark.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“So, in a curious lurid calm which could not last and yet, it seemed, could not end, the days went by.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Oh, all right, perhaps it wasn't all your fault, I was just doomed from the start.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Ludens experienced, as an extra pain, an intimation of the happiness he might have felt in such a place.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Now she did not even wish to try, for fear of rousing up something terrible.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“He was attentive but impersonal, and esteemed rather than loved.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Your best friends are in trouble and you say 'of course' and forget them instantly.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“She thought, I am becoming a recluse. Yes, that's it, that is the way.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“And all that time, Franca contained in her breast a storm of anguish and violence so terrible that she had at times, when she was alone and longing to 'break down', to clutch her breast with a fierce answering force to keep the black horror from spurting forth. Her face was calm and benign, always in company, and usually alone too, for she was aware that to play such a part properly allowed of no rest periods, no weak moments of unmasking. She must continue, in her deceit, whole, like the spy who, in order to go on, has to become what he seems. She was, daily, amazed at herself, at her self-control; and at the terrible demons which fed upon her, and in doing so, she realised, fed her. She had begun to need her rage and her hate, even of late her fierce cruel fantasies. She could not, and did not try to, riddle out, rationally order, explain, least of all banish, these horrible consolations, As it seemed, if she were not to die of her love she had to poison it; and even, over its death agonies, to exult. As the days went by, Franca cherished and nourished and developed her suffering, unable to envisage any change or any plan — any machine into which so much relentless force might be fed. Indeed she was afraid to plan or picture a different future of any kind. So long as she stayed silent she had a secret weapon. If she spoke, if once there were the least word, the least crack or fissure, upon which tears and screams could follow, she would have lost her one advantage, her source of ordinary viable life, and would be utterly undone and destroyed.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Is your father writing a book?" said Alison.

"No. He's existing. Some people live, like the rest of us, like the people in your plays. He just exists.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Better keep such things decently buried.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Now that the doors of possibility had magically opened one after the other, Ludens realised how much comfort he had derived from uncertainty.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“. . . where an iron bedstead was wrapped in stillness.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“At the very thought he felt a tendency to tremble.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“But he was surrendered, they had surrendered him, into the power of death.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Ludens thought, why can't I do that, why can't I just ask a woman to hold my hand, why can't I ask Franca to!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“He . . . felt as if, wanting to be needed by everyone, he were merely becoming some sort of semi-invisible messenger.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“He did not read. This continued to amaze Ludens who could not imagine existence without reading.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“She had loved him, she thought now, because, just at that time, she had had to have something else, someone else, to love, a private place for wounded love to go. But that had been, as she had then suspected and now knew, a device, a dream.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“And all the time the line of force which bound her to her husband stretched and vibrated so that her heart in secret haemorrhage, gushed blood.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“I'm being led — on some dark way.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“She stood there awkwardly, incapable of further theatre.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Franca, darling, let's be simple."

"And move quietly in the dark.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Of what value after all is a power which one could never use, or at any rate did not know how to use?”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Yes, I am free, she said to herself, but it's not like ordinary freedom, it's being in hell, a brilliant lucid hell.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“She had inhibited her sympathy, one genuine sympathetic impulse would have ruined her.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet

“Village life can be terribly unpeaceful!”
― Iris Murdoch, The Message to the Planet