Iris Murdoch

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”

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

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”

“We can only learn to love by loving.”

“A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.”

“The bicycle is a great good. But it can turn nasty if you show it any uncertainty.”

“Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.”

“The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.”

“Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.”

“Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.”

“Art is the telling of truth, and is the only available method for the telling of certain truths.”

“Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture.”

“To be a good man is to be a wise man.”

“The most essential and fundamental aspect of culture is the study of literature, since this is an education in how to picture and understand human situations.”

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

“Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story.”

“What a queer thing is memory, and what a queer thing is time.”

“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.”

“Only the very greatest art is philosophical.”