Top 100 Muriel Quotes
#1. In 2007, several musicologists contacted me at about the same time, expressing interest in the work of the mysterious Muriel Herbert, a few of whose songs they had come across.
Claire Tomalin
#2. Don't worry, Bill," Borkman told me. "I have Muriel and Richard in my pocket-back!" "In your back pocket - yes," I said to the crafty deerstalker on skis.
John Irving
#3. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning
sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.
Anne Lamott
#4. I also love Australian movies. I love Muriel's Wedding - I've seen in six times. Baz Luhrmann's best movie is strictly ballroom ... without question.
Ridley Scott
#5. There is silence and then the familiar smack of Beatrice Muriel's palm against her forehead. "A love marriage," she says. In her opinion, love marriages border on the indecent. They signify a breakdown of propriety, a giving in to the base instincts exhibited by the lower castes and foreigners.
Nayomi Munaweera
#6. To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.
(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)
Dorothy L. Sayers
#7. I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.
Ian Rankin
#8. Maybe you won't rock a cradle, Muriel. Some women seem to prefer to rock the boat.
Helen Frost
#9. Muriel, my mother, was my main confidant. She was a teacher of English at Watford grammar school but took a break while my sister Madeleine and I were children. She held court in the kitchen, and we talked about everything.
John Sulston
#10. Change of scene is the thing. I head of a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him "Come back, Muriel." Man started to write out a reply; suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never answered at all, and lived happily ever after.
P.G. Wodehouse
#11. Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely," said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. "But I must say, Ginevra's dress is far too low-cut."
Ginny glanced round, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again.
J.K. Rowling
#12. Whispering voice inside my head growing louder, my voice - not those of my parents or teachers or Carly or Muriel, even - telling me to live my life without fear or worry or doubt that nothing was going according to plan, as though such a plan ever existed in the first place.
Rachel Friedman
#13. Poet' had always sounded like a profession to me, or a talent. But the dead American [Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry] made it sound like a faith.
Ariel Gore
#14. Dear Emily, This week I went to the library. I got Black Beauty. It is about a horse. It is the best book I ever read. I read it three times. I have to go now. Write soon. Yours truly, Muriel. P.S. Mama sends her love.
Beverly Cleary
#15. Hello," Newel said. "Look, Doren, we have visitors. Kendra, Seth, and ... Muriel's weirdo puppet." ... Newel grabbed Seth's hand and shook it vigorously. "Congratulations. You just found yourself a secret entrance."
"So seriously," Doren said. "What's with the puppet?
Brandon Mull
#16. Oh, and I have to mention one lady who does all of my book covers in cross stitch and frames them. Muriel. She's amazing. I just received one for my latest, Love And Dr Devon, actually. It's very sweet of her to do it.
Alan Titchmarsh
#17. A lasting marriage, they say, is one where the two reach for different sections of the Sunday paper. Me, I go right for the obituaries, just like those very elderly characters in Muriel Spark's spooky novel, 'Memento Mori.'
Billy Collins
#18. So you're getting back together with her? Just like that? Muriel asks.
"Not 'just like that'..." "How then?" Muriel enjoys playing devil's advocate. "For starters, it will have to be long distance for a while..." She doesn't let up. "For a while? Have you booked the U-Haul already?
Harper Bliss
#19. William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
Jennifer Haigh
#20. Muriel, you're not a convenience. I'd walk across a mile of cut glass in my bare feet to hold your hand and talk to you for one hour. You're everything to me.
Walt
Robyn Carr
#21. He found and praised Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat. I said I found it too schematic and preferred The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. He nodded, but not in agreement, it seemed, more like a therapist who now understood my problem.
Ian McEwan
#22. But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses
Muriel Barbery
#23. Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.
Muriel Spark
#24. Given is the word. Given publicly, on the first Good Friday, on a hill, in the sight of all, was the visible demonstration of the only permanent way to overcome evil. Human nature demands something more enduring than the unquiet equilibrium of rival powers.
Muriel Lester
#25. In any event, it's done, said Papa-which are the words of a coward to the power of ten.
Muriel Barbery
#27. Phrases like 'the team spirit' are always employed to cut across individualism, love and personal loyalties.
Muriel Spark
#28. I may know that the world is an ugly place, I still don't want to see it.
Muriel Barbery
#29. But you won't be able to pin her down on sex. Have you thought of politics?
Muriel Spark
#30. In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song.
Muriel Barbery
#31. it is hard to keep your feet on the earth while your heart looks for the heavens.
Muriel Maufroy
#32. Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that's not true, it's too late.
Muriel Barbery
#33. The lines gradually become their own demiurges and, like some witless yet miraculous participant, I witness the birth on paper of sentences that have eluded my will and appear in spite of me on the sheet, teaching me something that I neither knew nor thought I might want to know.
Muriel Barbery
#34. Ridicule is the only honorable weapon we have left.
Muriel Spark
#35. A teenager who pretends to be an adult is still a teenager. If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian.
Muriel Barbery
#36. There was only one thing I wanted: to be left alone, without too many demand upon my person, so that for a few moments each day I might be allowed to assuage my hunger.
Muriel Barbery
#37. One characteristic of modern poetry is that arrangement of parts which strikes many people as being violent or obscure.
Muriel Rukeyser
#38. The only purpose of cats is that they constitute mobile decorative objects.
Muriel Barbery
#39. I think there is choice possible at any moment to us, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice
Muriel Rukeyser
#41. Once your eyes get opened to pacifism, you can't shut them again. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. You may bitterly regret the fact that you happen to be one of the tiny minority of the human race who have caught this angle of vision, but you can't help it.
Muriel Lester
#42. When people say that nothing happens in their lives I believe them. But you must understand that everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.
Muriel Spark
#46. The French are often, when it comes to wine, so formal that they border on the ridiculous.
Muriel Barbery
#48. It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree but smiles.
Muriel Spark
#49. In the partnership between ourselves and the horse there must be one ruling spirit, and that one must be the rider.
Muriel Wace
#50. It was a gusty day, and from the windows of Caroline's top-floor flat, only the sky was visible with its little hurrying clouds. It was a day when being indoors was meaningful, wasting an afternoon in superior confidences with a friend before the two-barred electric heater.
Muriel Spark
#51. Ici le fashion police. How can I enhance your fabulousness
Muriel Zagha
#52. I will try to be non-violent
one more day
this morning, waking the world away
in the violent day.
Muriel Rukeyser
#53. but it is the waiting that is unbearable, this suspension of time when something has not yet happened and where we feel how very useless it is to struggle
Muriel Barbery
#54. 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.
Muriel Spark
#55. Tea and mangas instead of coffee and newspapers: something elegant and enchanting, instead of adult power struggles and their sad aggressiveness.
Muriel Barbery
#56. 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.
Muriel Spark
#57. I'm afraid to go into myself and see what's going on in there.
Muriel Barbery
#58. So that's what it's like? All of a sudden all possibility just vanishes? A life full of projects, discussions just started, desires not even fulfilled - it all vanishes in a second and there's nothing left, nothing left to do, and there's no going back?
Muriel Barbery
#59. I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.
Muriel Rukeyser
#60. The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated.
Muriel Spark
#61. In our world, that's the way you live your grown-up life: you must constantly rebuild your identity as an adult, the way it's been put together it is wobbly, ephemeral, and fragile, it cloaks despair and, when you're alone in front of the mirror, it tells you the lies you need to believe.
Muriel Barbery
#62. To beauty, all is forgiven, even vulgarity. Intelligence no longer seems an adequate compensation for things ...
Muriel Barbery
#63. You have a mayor who hates guns. If it was up to me, we wouldn't have any handguns in the District of Columbia. I swear to protect the Constitution and what the courts say, but I will do it in the most restrictive way as possible.
Muriel Bowser
#64. Neptune can sense that I love him; his multiple desires are perfectly clear to me. What charms me about the whole business is that he stubbornly insists on remaining a dog, whereas his mistress would like to make a gentleman of him.
Muriel Barbery
#65. Music plays a huge role in my life. It is music that helps me to endure ... well ... everything there is to endure.
Muriel Barbery
#66. When we disappear, it is the others who die for us
Muriel Barbery
#68. Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great
Muriel Spark
#70. Saving and pinching to get married, you're losing the best time of your life.
Muriel Spark
#71. Let us run up debts. One is nobody without debts.
Muriel Spark
#72. Spying is always an expensive method of acquiring information.
Muriel Lester
#73. That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people. - The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Muriel Barbery
#74. The universe of poetry is the universe of emotional truth. Our material is in the way we feel and the way we remember.
Muriel Rukeyser
#75. I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.
Muriel Spark
#77. Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.
Muriel Rukeyser
#78. True faith, it is a well-known fact, has little regard for chapels, but does believe in the communion of mysteries.
Muriel Barbery
#79. 4:15. Not 4 not 4:30 but 4:15. She thought to intimidate me with the use of quarter hours.
Muriel Spark
#80. We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.
Muriel Barbery
#81. 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 ...
Muriel Spark
#82. People think that children don't know anything. It's enough to make you wonder if grownups were ever children once upon a time.
Muriel Barbery
#83. Wherever
we walk
we will make
Wherever
we protest
we will go planting
Make poems
seed grass
feed a child growing
build a house
Whatever we stand against
We will stand feeding and seeding
Wherever
I walk
I will make
Muriel Rukeyser
#84. As always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions to crumble.
Muriel Barbery
#85. 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.
Muriel Spark
#86. Literature, for example, serves a pragmatic purpose. Like any form of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable.
Muriel Barbery
#87. The horse will always do right if he understands. This is very remarkable. It is true neither of human beings nor of dogs.
Muriel Wace
#88. Entrusting one's life is not the same as opening up one's soul.
Muriel Barbery
#89. If you have but one friend, make sure you choose her well.
Muriel Barbery
#90. I suddenly felt my spirit expand, for I was capable of grasping the utter beauty of the trees.
Muriel Barbery
#91. 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.
Muriel Spark
#92. To write entire pages of dazzling prose about a tomato
for Pierre Arthens reviews food as if he were telling a story, and that alone is enough to make him a genius
without ever seeing or holding the tomato is a troubling display of virtuosity.
Muriel Barbery
#93. If there were no poetry on any day in the world, poetry would be invented that day. For there would be an intolerable hunger.
Muriel Rukeyser
#94. How do you know when you're in love?' she said.
'The traffic improves and the cost of living seems very low.
Muriel Spark
#95. How can one betray oneself to such a degree? What corruption greater even than power can lead us to thus deny the proof of pleasure, to hold in contempt that which we have loved? ... I could have written about chouquettes my whole life long; and my whole life long, I wrote against them.
Muriel Barbery
#96. 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.
Muriel Spark
#97. As far as I can see, only psychoanalysis can compete with Christians in their love of drawn-out suffering.
Muriel Barbery
#98. Information is only useful when it can be understood
Muriel Cooper
#99. So great was the noise during the day that I used to lie awake at night listening to silence.
Muriel Spark
#100. A victor's peace is usually vindictive and stirs up a passion for revenge a generation or so later.
Muriel Lester
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