Muriel Spark > Quotes

“Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“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.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“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. ”
― Muriel Spark

“For concentration you need a cat...And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give you back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence is enough.”
― Muriel Spark

“...it never really occurred to her that literary men, if they like women at all, do not want literary women but girls.”
― Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means

“These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognise the years of one's prime, always remember that.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“It is difficult for people of advanced years to start remembering they must die. It is best to form the habit while young.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

“For people who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree but smiles.”
― Muriel Spark

“Beware the ire of the calm.”
― Muriel Spark

“I'm old-fashioned beyond my years.”
― Muriel Spark, Not to Disturb

“She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings.”
― Muriel Spark, Aiding and Abetting

“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 light from a desk lamp...gives a cat great satisfaction. The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding. And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you, sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. You need not watch the cat all the time. Its presence alone is enough. The effect of a cat on your concentration is remarkable, very mysterious.”
― Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

“Give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“[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.”
― Muriel Spark, Loitering With Intent

“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, The Driver's Seat

“...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;...”
― Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

“pisseur de copie”
― Muriel Spark

“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.
”
― Muriel Spark

“Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

“I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.”
― Muriel Spark

“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. 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, from the Latin root prefix in meaning in and the stem trudo, I thrust.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work. ”
― Muriel Spark, Loitering With Intent

“If I had my life to live over again, I would form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is not another practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

“you're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of it's own. We do miss what we haven't had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of warm limbs at night, the absent”
― Muriel Spark

“after thirty years' hostile fellowship with Collie, of course she did quite well understand that collie had a habit of skipping several stages in the logical sequence of her thoughts and would utter apparently disconnected statements, especially when confused by unfamiliar subject or the presence of a man”
― Muriel Spark, The Girls of Slender Means

“They are demanding equal rights with us,’ says Mrs. Fiedke. ‘That’s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewellery, hair down to their shoulders, and I’m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can’t help it should be put on an island. It’s the others I’m talking about. There was a time they would stand up and open the door for you. They would take their hat off. But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn’t have made them different from us to the naked eye. They don’t want to be all dressed alike any more. Which is only a move against us. You couldn’t run an army like that, let alone the male sex. With all due respects to Mr. Fiedke, may he rest in peace, the male sex is getting out of hand. Of course, Mr. Fiedke knew his place as a man, give him his due.’
…..
‘If we don’t look lively,’ she says, ‘they will be taking over the homes and the children, and sitting about having chats while we go and fight to defend them and work to keep them. They won’t be content with equal rights only. Next thing they’ll want the upper hand, mark my words. Diamond earrings, I’ve read in the paper.”
― Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

“Remember you must die.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

“Ever since her conversion [Barbara] had met sophisticated women who, on the subject of Catholicism, sneered like French village atheists, and expected to be excused from normal good manners, let alone intelligence, on this one subject.”
― Muriel Spark, The Mandelbaum Gate