The Green Knight Quotes

“To find someone — oh yes — that is the problem. To have mutual love, that is so difficult indeed.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Louise was a jewel locked away; and after the first 'if only' period had passed and Clement had got used to 'Mrs Anderson', he felt that his love for her had not faded, but had suffered a sea change into something special and unique, causing a special and unique and much valued, pain.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Here was another 'if only' — if only he had acted quickly, spontaneously, throwing 'tact' and 'good form' to the winds. Justthenshe had needed him, and he had failed. This bitter reflection positively, for a time, hindered his strange friendship with Louise, he avoided her almost to the point of boorishness, almost deliberately seeming to have lost his interest and his affection. The pain of his 'might have been' led him instinctively to devalue his loss, make it not a loss but something inconceivable and nil.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“The problems were too evident, they sat together eyeing them in silence. The stage now belonged to the young people, there would be happenings. Yet nothing happened; and Clement felt as if a magic spell had paralysed them all.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Nothing happened; yet there were disturbing signs and portents.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“But now he was dreaming, he was wildly imagining things.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“As he rose to go and held Louise's hand and gazed at her he felt for a moment his old love for her taking possession of his whole being. They looked at each other. Ifeedupon this looking, thought Clement, but does she? I don't know, and I cannot ask. I am terrified of saying something which would wound our whole precious relationship. We are well as we are. I love her, that's all, that ismydrama.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“I told you I was going to retire from the world. That's still on. You remember that.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Yes, my mother was on about Byron. But who wants to be like Byron? I despise him.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“It is necessary at this point to recount what actually occurred, as opposed to what was generally supposed to have occurred, on that terrible evening when Lucas killed a man.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“What was to change many lives happened, and happened very fast in the next moments.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“...solitary sinister men with terrible secrets — of whom Clement now and forever after must be one.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“I have always wanted to kill you, ever since the moment when I learnt of your existence.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“She thought, perhaps I am simply mad. It will grow worse. That will be my life.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Of course she had read this work many times before, but there were certain parts to which she passionately returned: so cool, so elegant, so beautiful, so terrible. As she read tears began to stream down her face.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Bellamy thought, he is beginning to avoid me, my presence embarrasses him, my problems irritate him. I am becoming an unperson.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Butallthis, all this shift and change, thought Bellamy, is part of thevast liewhich surrounds me and wherein I move from one fantasy to another. I wanted to escape to solitude and darkness in a holy place, but the dark is just the old dark of meaninglessness and falsehood, which separates me from my friends and from the real world where people love and help each other.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“We all love a glimpse of Lucas, it's a religious experience.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Clement, usually a fluent speaker in any situation, could hear his voice assuming a pompous and affected tone, not unlike that which many actors use (wrongly in Clement's view) when playing Polonius.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“They had exhorted her to work hard, it need only be for a short time after all, at 'dull school subjects', such as English, French, History and Maths. Moy, who hated these with the possible exception of English, had decided some time ago that she wouldnotwork at these horrid subjects, wouldnottake any of the beastly exams, and would leave school as soon as possible. She occasionally tried to communicate this decision to her family, but they simply refused to listen.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Suppose she never got into art school, suppose she was not a painter after all? Suppose the talents which others had persuaded her she possessed were to abandon her overnight, or turn out to have been unreal all the time? Suppose she had to take a typing course or live with a word processor? I would die, she thought, I would kill myself ormakemyself die of grief. Already there was one great deep grief in her life.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“He awoke the next morning to an instant consciousness of disaster.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“If at that moment Clement had caught sight of the dog and had managed to capture him, the fates of a number of people in this story would have been entirely different. Such is the vast play of chance in human lives.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“When Louise returned to the Aviary the others were playing the game of what character in fiction Peter Mir reminded them of.

'I think he's Mr Pickwick,' said Louise.

'Oh no! Never!' said Sefton. 'I think he's more like Prospero.'

'I think he's the Green Knight,' said Aleph. 'Come on, Moy, what do you think?'

'I think he's the Minotaur.'

'The Minotaur isn't a literary character, he's a mythical character,' Sefton objected.

'Oh really —!'

'What does Clement think?' said Aleph.

'I think he's Mephistopheles,' said Clement.

'Surely not, he's so nice!' said Louise.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“I have been struck down before my life begins. I have already died in the war.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Lately Louise had decided to give up wearing make-up altogether, but had not yet acted upon the decision.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“I run, I run, I am gathered to your heart. But no, she thought, it's not like that. I am alone. I cannotreachanybody.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“For me, nothing can ever be well again.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“They had become, year by year, month by month, mysterious to her, her love for them an extended pain, a web or field of force, of which she felt at times the almost breaking tension.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight

“Louise thought,what will happen to them— perhaps just this is the beginning of some awful end.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Green Knight