Iris Murdoch

Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.

All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the same.

With literary fiction, generally a film maker falls in love with a book. In commercial fiction, it's a producer or studio falling in love with a book they can make into a movie with worldwide appeal.

Why do men fight who were born to be brothers?

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.