Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one’s luck. – Iris Murdoch
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same. – Iris Murdoch
Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self. – Iris Murdoch
In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way. – Iris Murdoch
People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us. – Iris Murdoch
Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods. – Iris Murdoch
The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all. – Iris Murdoch
We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality. – Iris Murdoch
No love is entirely without worth, even when the frivolous calls to the frivolous and the base to the base. – Iris Murdoch
The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life’s major mysteries. – Iris Murdoch
Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes. – Iris Murdoch