I hate solitude but I am afraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself and to turn it into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company I need is the company which a pub or a cafe will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls.
Iris MurdochIt is difficult in life to be good, and difficult in art to portray goodness. Perhaps we don't know much about goodness.
Iris MurdochTrue love gallops, it flies, it is the swiftest of all modes of thought, swifter even than hate and fear.
Iris MurdochI just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.
Iris MurdochTime can divorce us from the reality of people, it can separate us from people and turn them into ghosts. Or rather it is we who turn them into ghosts or demons. Some kinds of fruitless preoccupations with the past can create such simulacra, and they can exercise power, like those heroes at Troy fighting for a phantom Helen.
Iris Murdoch