The Black Prince Quotes

“I know time doesn't heal. That's the silliest idea of all.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Little pictures out of hell.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Even as I write these words, which should be lucid and filled with glowing colour, I feel the very darkness of my own personality invading my pen. Only perhaps in the ink of this darkness can this writing properly be written? It is not really possible to write like an angel, though some of our near-gods by heaven-inspired trickery sometimes seem to do it.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I tasted injustice and the special horror of seeing its perpetrators flourish. How frequent and how bitter is this aspect of human wretchedness. The wicked prosper in front of our eyes and go on and on and on prospering. What a blessing it must have been once to be able to believe in hell. A great and deep human consolation was lost to us when that ancient and respectable belief faded from our minds.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Of course, my dear, I cannot, how could I, altogether regret what has happened.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“The young are self-satisfied really and utterly ruthless.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“The book is quite serious and quite funny. (Most novels are.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“For the moment however behold me sitting with Priscilla and Francis. A domestic interior. It is about ten o'clock in the evening and the curtains are drawn.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Priscilla is in hell. Well, we all are. Life is torture, consciousness is torture. All our little devices are just morphia to stop us from screaming . . . We're each of us screaming away in our own private padded cell.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Of course you don't know yourself, lucky old you. I just know myself too bloody well.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“But what words exactly did he use? People who aren't writers never describe things exactly.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“When dealing with a married couple one can never be neutral. The hot magnetic power of each one's view of the other makes the spectator sway.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Our relationship in fact was never idle. It was obvious that we constantly thought about each other.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“We ignore what we are doing until it is too late to alter it. We never allow ourselves quite to focus upon moments of decision; and these are often in fact hard to find even if we are searching for them.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“You understand nothing of—the horror—no wonder you can't write real books—you don't see—the horror—”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“But I have, I suppose, become through the power of love, awful, relentless.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I'm terribly in love with you. But please don't worry about it.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I'm totally unworthy of this love which you are offering to me.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Perhaps that was the only time which we should ever, ever have together. Perhaps it was something which would never, never, never come again.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“And even in those seconds, and even as I wondered with anguish whether I would ever see her again, I lived with her in some angelic timeless world of quiet communication and absolute understanding.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“I felt such a stranger there, like a poor lodger. One must be with one's own people.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Is that a quotation?"

"Only from me.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“That this world is a place of horror must affect every serious artist and thinker, darkening his reflection, ruining his system, sometimes actually driving him mad. Any seriousness avoids this fact at its peril, and the great ones who have seemed to neglect it have only done so in appearance.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“But there can be intuitions even here of a more sublime agony.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“We cannot really love the dead. We love a fantasm that secretly consoles. What love sometimes mistakes for death is a kind of intense suffering, a pain that can be endured and absorbed. But the idea of a real ending, that cannot be envisaged . . . Indeed, in the language of love the concept of an ending is devoid of sense. (So we must go beyond love or utterly change it.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“(The false god punishes, the true god slays.)”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“It was a voyage into the absurd.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Oh Christ, if I could only have some happiness.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“Perhaps the reality is in the suffering. But it can't be. Love promises happiness. Art promises happiness. Yet it isn't exactly a promise . . .”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince