Iris Murdoch

"In almost every marriage there is a selfish and an unselfish partner. A pattern is set up and soon becomes inflexible, of one person always making the demands and one person always giving way."

"Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

"One doesn't have to get anywhere in a marriage. It's not a public conveyance."

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us."

"Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream."

"The cry of equality pulls everyone down."

"The priesthood is a marriage. People often start by falling in love, and they go on for years without realizing that love must change into some other love which is so unlike it that it can hardly be recognized as love at all."

"There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship."

"We can only learn to love by loving."