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1 " If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. "
― Muriel Spark , Memento Mori
2 " If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat. Alone with the cat in the room where you work ... the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp ... The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious. "
― Muriel Spark , A Far Cry from Kensington
3 " To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. "
― Muriel Spark , The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
4 " Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties. "
5 " 4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours. "
6 " I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams. "
― Muriel Spark
7 " It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due "
8 " you're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of it's own. We do miss what we haven't had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of warm limbs at night, the absent "
9 " Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid. "
10 " It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater. "
― Muriel Spark , The Comforters
11 " it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls. "
― Muriel Spark , The Girls of Slender Means
12 " The sparkle and morning-freshness of the shop, and the butter-conjuring girl, formed a mind-picture which accompanied the whole of my youth.(about the Buttercup Dairy) "
― Muriel Spark , Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography
13 " Sandwiches,' she said, 'like diamonds, are forever. "
― Muriel Spark , Aiding and Abetting
14 " It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden. "
15 " People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They can read and write, they can afford any of the instruments of book writing such as pens, paper, computers, tape recorders, and generally by the time they have reached this decision, they have had a simple education. "
16 " Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life. "
― Muriel Spark , The Ballad of Peckham Rye
17 " Do you know, Sandy dear, all my ambitions are for you and Rose. You have got insight, perhaps not quite spiritual, but you're a deep one, and Rose has got instinct.' 'Perhaps not quite spiritual' said Sandy.'Yes,' said Miss Brodie, 'you're right. Rose has got a future by virtue of her instinct.'...'I ought to know because my prime has brought me instinct and insight, both. "
18 " It is a good thing to go to Paris for a few days if you have had a lot of trouble, and that is my advice to everyone except Parisians. "
19 " She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings. "
20 " The word "education" comes from the root e from ex, out, and duco, I lead. It means a leading out. To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. "
