Muriel Spark Quotations

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

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

I used to think it a pity that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control.

It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.

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

One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.

Be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur.

One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.

To me education is a leading out of what is already there in the pupil's soul. To Miss Mackay it is a putting in of something that is not there, and that is not what I call education. I call it intrusion.

All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.

If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic.

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

I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.

I am putting old heads on your young shoulders...all my pupils are the creme de la creme.

Godfrey's wife, Charmian, sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical order, which Godfrey had told her was better than no order at all since she now had grasp of neither logic nor chronology

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 ...

It isn't necessarily the great and famous beauty spots we fall in love with. As with people, so with places. Love is unforeseen, and we can all find ourselves affectionately attached to the minor and the less obvious.

Nothing can be more puritanical in application than the virtues.

it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.

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

From my experience of life I believe my personal motto should be: 'Beware of any man bringing flowers.

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.

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.

Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.

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

The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion.

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 ...

If you choose the sort of life which has no conventional pattern you have to try to make an art of it, or it is a mess.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

sooner or later I do what I want to do.

Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first

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

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

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

The sparkle and morning-freshness of the shop, and the butter-conjuring girl, formed a mind-picture which accompanied the whole of my youth.(about the Buttercup Dairy)

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

Interviews can be stimulating. It depends on the intelligence of the interviewer.

Contradictions in human character are one of its most consistent notes ...

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.

The sacrifice of pleasures is of course itself a pleasure.

New York, home of the vivisectors of the mind, and of the mentally vivisected still to be reassembled, of those who live intact, habitually wondering about their states of sanity, and home of those whose minds have been dead, bearing the scars of resurrection.

If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. No other practice so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one -surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.

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

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.

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

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

Let us run up debts. One is nobody without debts.

You look for one thing and you find another.

[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.

Beware of men bearing flowers.

Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.

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

It is one of the secrets of Nature in its mood of mockery that fine weather lays heavier weight on the mind and hearts of the depressed and the inwardly tormented than does a really bad day with dark rain sniveling continuously and sympathetically from a dirty sky.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great

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

People who quoted the Scriptures in criticism of others were terrible bores and usually they misapplied the text. One could prove anything against anyone from the Bible.

I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.

...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;...

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.

I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.

I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.

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

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.

Beware the ire of the calm.

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