Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

— Iris Murdoch

Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

— Iris Murdoch

... male company, sheer complicit male company: the complicity of males which is like, indeed is, a kind of complicity in crime, in chauvinism, in getting away with things, in just gluttonously enjoying the present even if hell is all around.

— Iris Murdoch

Marian was suddenly overcome by an appalling crippling panic. She was very frightened at the idea of arriving. But it was more than that. She feared the rocks and the cliffs and the grotesque dolmen and the ancient secret things. Her two companions seemed no longer reassuring but dreadfully alien and even sinister. She felt, for the first time in her life, completely isolated and in danger. She became in an instant almost faint with terror. She said, as a cry for help, ‘I’m feeling terribly nervous’.‘I know you are,’ said Scot tow.(…) Marian was appalled at the sudden quietness. But the insane panic had left her. She was frightened now in an ordinary way, sick in her stomach, shy, tongue-tied, horribly aware of the onset of a new world.

— Iris Murdoch

Mercifully one forgets one's love affairs as one forgets one's dreams.

— Iris Murdoch

Never seen the sea! How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child.

— Iris Murdoch

One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance.

— Iris Murdoch

One forgot, one forgot. What hold had one on the past? The present moment was a little travelling in darkness.

— Iris Murdoch

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.

— Iris Murdoch

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.

— Iris Murdoch