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1 " Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the possibility of children. "
― Iris Murdoch , The Black Prince
2 " I have nobody in the world. I'll kill myself. That's best. Everyone will say, It's for the best that she killed herself, she's better off dead . . . I hate myself so much I could spend hours and hours just screaming with hatred and with the pain of it, oh the pain of it . . . "
3 " Εκείνη την εποχή συζητούσε να γίνει “μοντέλο”, αλλά απ’ όσο ξέρω εγώ τουλάχιστον, δεν έκανε καμία σοβαρή απόπειρα προς αυτή την κατεύθυνση. Εκείνο το οποίο έγινε στο τέλος, και χωρίς καμία ιδιαίτερη λεπτότητα, ήταν κοκότα. "
4 " Every artist is an unhappy lover. And unhappy lovers want to tell their story. "
5 " We defend ourselves with descriptions and tame the world by generalizing. "
6 " The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvelously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so nearly apportioned to our need. Angels must wonder at these beings who fall so regularly out of awareness into a fantasm-infested dark. How our frail identities survive these chasms no philosopher has ever been able to explain. "
7 " Once in an endless meadow, just able to peer through the tawny haze of the grass tops, the child who was myself had watched a young fox catching mice, an elegant newly minted fox, straight from the hand of God, brilliantly ruddy, with black stockings and a white-tipped brush. The fox heard and turned. I saw its intense vivid mask, its liquid amber eyes. Then it was gone. An image of such beauty and such mysterious sense. The child wept and knew himself an artist. "
8 " Love generates, or rather reveals, something which may be called absolute charm. In the beloved nothing is gauche. Every move of the head, every tone of the voice, every laugh or grunt or cough or twitch of the nose is as valuable and revealing as a glimpse of paradise. "
9 " It was not simply that I frenziedly desired what I could not have. That was but a blunt and unrefined kind of suffering. I was condemned to be with her even in her very rejection of me. And how long and how slow and how long-drawn-out that rejection would be. Still temptation would follow where she was. Endlessly she would give herself to others taking me with her. Like an obscene puny familiar I would sit in the corners of bedrooms where she kissed and loved. She would make consort with my foes, she would adore those that mocked me, she would drink contempt for me from alien lips. And all the time my very soul would travel with her, invisible and crying soundlessly with pain. "
10 " An experience is richest not talked of. "
11 " The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities of life on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. "
12 " Happy is the civilization which can breed men accustomed from infancy to regard certain at least of the ego's natural activities as unthinkable. "
13 " To overthrow a tyrant, whether in public or in private, one must learn to hate. "
14 " There are no spare unrecorded encapsulated moments in which we can behave 'anyhow' and then expect to resume life where we left off. "
15 " Waiting in fear is surely one of the most awful of human tribulations. "
16 " I crave for love, everybody does . . . and I've never had a bloody crumb of it—and I've given so much love to people—I can really love people, I can, I let them walk over me—but nobody's ever loved me. "
17 " Yet on the other hand, I did manage to write, and without more than occasional repining, during my years of bondage, and I would not, as some unsatisfied writers do, blame my lack of productivity upon my lack of time. "
18 " Love is no respecter of ages, everyone knows that. "
19 " It might be most dramatically effective to begin the tale at the moment when Arnold Baffin rang me up and said, "Bradley, could you come round here please, I think I have just killed my wife. "
20 " Disapproving of things is all right. But you mustn't disapprove of people. It cuts you off. "
