Muriel Spark > Quotes

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

“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 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. 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

“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

“For those who like that sort of thing," said Miss Brodie in her best Edinburgh voice, "That is the sort of thing they like.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“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

“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

“I never trust the airlines from those countries where the pilots believe in the afterlife. You are safer when they don't.”
― Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

“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

“Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and dying as on a battlefield.”
― Muriel Spark, Memento Mori

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

“[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

“...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

“One’s prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognise your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must then live it to the full.”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

“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.”
― Muriel Spark

“It is not because we are rats that we tend to abandon people who are down, it is because we are embarrassed.”
― Muriel Spark, A Far Cry from Kensington

“It's only possible to betray where loyalty is due”
― Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

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

“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

“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