Muriel Spark Quotes

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul.

I have a great desire to make people smile - not laugh. Laughter is too aggressive. People bare their teeth.

So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to silence.

These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, always remember that.

You look for one thing and you find another.

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.

Looking forward to going home, I was necessarily looking backward.

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

Fiction to me is a kind of parable. You have got to make up your mind it's not true. Some kind of truth emerges from it, but it's not fact.

Neurotics are awfully quick to notice other people's mentalities.

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce.

Beware of men bearing flowers.

Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.

Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death life is insipid.

sooner or later I do what I want to do.

The letters of famous people can be placed into two categories: there is the type of letter which becomes itself a valuable contribution to literature through its wit, style or wisdom; another kind is that whose main importance lies in the provision of a background to their author's life. Especially in the correspondence of great writers and poets, these two factors are very often combined.

[My novel] took up the sweetest part of my mind and the rarest part of my imagination; it was like being in love and better. All day long when I was busy [...], I had my unfinished novel personified almost as a secret companion and accomplice following me like a shadow wherever I went, whatever I did.

She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.

we have invented sex guilt to take our minds off the real thing.

Jealousy ... is an affliction of the spirit which, unlike some sins of the flesh, gives no one any pleasure.

For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.

How wonderful it feels to be an artist and a woman in the twentieth century.

Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.

Being in love is something like poetry. Certainly, you can analyze and expound its various senses and intentions, but there is always something left over, mysteriously hovering between music and meaning.

It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.

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.

If you want to concentrate deeply on some problem, and especially some piece of writing or paper-work, you should acquire a cat . . .

It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.

It's a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn't leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.

I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work.

Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.

I was just as anxious to prevent injustice as to cause justice.

I am a hoarder of two things: documents and trusted friends.

No mind should submit their mind to another mind He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still -- that's my motto. I won't be brainwashed.

A rebellion against a tyrant is only immoral when it hasn't got a chance.

The words of the double-tongued are as if they were harmless, but they reach even to the inner part of the bowels. Praise be to the Lord, who distinguishes our cause and delivers us from the unjust and deceitful man.

We often laughed at others in our house, and I picked up the craft of being polite while people were present and laughing later if there was anything to laugh about.

Beware the ire of the calm.

The true novelist is one who understands the work as a continuous poem, is a myth-maker, and the wonder of the art resides in the endless different ways of telling a story.

It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.

everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.

Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.

No medicine man these days can afford to be without a portable tape recorder. Without the aid of this modern device, which may be easily concealed in the undergrowth of the jungle, the old tribal authority will rapidly become undermined by the mounting influenece of modern skepticism.

Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.

Try as i do, i can't recall her surname. Indeed, her very abstractedness and insubstantial personality seemed to say 'forget me'; she seemed to live in parenthesis.