All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

— Iris Murdoch

All the time when I speak to you, even now, I'm saying not precisely what I think, but what will impress you and make you respond. That's so even between us - and how much more it's so where there are stronger motives for deception. In fact, one's so used to this one hardly sees it. The whole language is a machine for making falsehoods.

— Iris Murdoch

AMO Amos mat am amus Amati am ant Amati atavistic await Maximus atavistic amazement Amadeo makers merit… Everything was love. Everything will be love. Furthermore, everything has been love. Furthermore, everything would be love. Furthermore, everything would have been love. Ah, that was it, the truth at last. Everything would have been love. The huge eye, which had become an immense sphere, was gently breathing, only it was not an eye nor a sphere, but a great wonderful animal covered in little waving legs like hairs, waving oh so gently as if they were underwater. All shall be well and all shall be well said the ocean. So the place of reconciliation existed after all, not like a little knothole in a cupboard but flowing everywhere and being everything. I had only to will it, and it would be, for spirit is omnipotent only I never knew it, like being able to walk on the air. I could forgive. Furthermore, I could be forgiven. Furthermore, I could forgive. Perhaps that was the whole of it after all. Perhaps being forgiven was just forgiving only no one had ever told me. There was nothing else needful. Just to forgive. Forgiving equals being forgiven, the secret of the universe, do not whatever you do forget it. The past was folded up and in the twinkling of an eye everything had been changed and made beautiful and good.

— Iris Murdoch

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

— Iris Murdoch

Artists are indeed unlikely to be good, goodness would silence them.

— Iris Murdoch

As we live our precarious lives on the brink of the void, constantly coming closer to a state of nonbeing, we are all too often aware of our fragility.

— Iris Murdoch

Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the bereaved

— Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

— Iris Murdoch

But death is not easy, and life can win by simulating it.

— Iris Murdoch

But it was just luck really if the girls survived. You're like a man firing a machine gun into a supermarket who happens not to become a murderer.

— Iris Murdoch