Karen Frances

“A less courageous person would have felt that it was too late, they would have felt ashamed, they would think wellI don't want this, I know I shall hate it, it's all wrong, but I'm so involved now I'll have to put up with it, and I know that later on I'll keep on wishing that I'd had the nerve to say no, even at the last minute....”
― Iris Murdoch, Jackson's Dilemma

“He was empty within. There was no stimulus, no absorbing task into which he could throw himself. But his nervous activity, his inability to be quiet,.........had indeed taken the upper hand and become his master. It was something artificial, a pressure on the nerves, a depressant, in fact......This craving for activity had become a martyrdom, but it was dissipated in a host of trivialities.”
― Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family

“How mysterious night and day are, this endless procession off dark and light....I think such sad thoughts - of people in trouble and afraid, all lonely people all prisoners.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Unicorn

“Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand.”
― Ezra Pound