All Quotes By Tag: Iris-murdoch

“We are all potentially demons to each other, but some close relationships are saved from this fate.”

“The trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women, whereas I, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, do not.””I don’t despise women. I was in love with all Shakespeare’s heroines before I was twelve.””But they don’t exist, dear man, that’s the point. They live in the never-never land of art, all tricked out in Shakespeare’s wit and wisdom, and mock us from there, filling us with false hopes and empty dreams. The real thing is spite and lies and arguments about money.”

“I have felt more passion with less comfort elsewhere: the mysterious deep half-blind preferences of human beings for each other, the quick probing tentacles that seek in the dark, why one inexplicably and yet certainly loves A and is indifferent to B.”

“Christ, I loathe women. But I can’t get going on the other tack either. And you needn’t blush and look coy, I never fancied you. I know what you got up to with Fritzie Eitel! No—but I’d have had old Wilfred if he’d asked me. What did old Wilfred do for sex? No one ever knew. Perhaps he didn’t have any, and if so good on him.”

“It’s not so easy.””What isn’t?””To establish relationships, you can’t just elect people, it can’t be done by thinking and willing.”

“There is a deep foundation of my being which knows not of time and change and is still and ever with Hartley, in that good place where we once were.”

“But by now anything was better than hope.”