Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Muriel Spark, fully Dame Muriel Sarah Camberg Spark

Scottish Author and Novelist

"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."

"New York, home of the vivisectors of the mind, and of the mentally vivisected still to be reassembled, of those who live intact, habitually wondering about their states of sanity, and home of those whose minds have been dead, bearing the scars of resurrection."

"One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom."

"One's prime is elusive. You little girls, when you grow up, must be on the alert to recognize your prime at whatever time of your life it may occur. You must live it to the full."

"Sandwiches, she said, like diamonds, are forever."

"She wasn't a person to whom things happen. She did all the happenings."

"Oh she says the inconceivable sorrow of it, those chairs piled up at night when you're sitting in a cafÅ . The last one left."

"No mind should submit their mind to another mind He that complies against his will is of his own opinion still -- that's my motto. I won't be brainwashed."

"People say my novels are cruel because cruel things happen in them and I keep this even tone. I?m often very deadpan, but there?s a moral statement too, and what it?s saying is that there?s a life beyond this, and these events are not the most important things. They?re not important in the long run."

"People who want to write books do so because they feel it to be the easiest thing they can do. They can read and write, they can afford any of the instruments of book writing such as pens, paper, computers, tape recorders, and generally by the time they have reached this decision, they have had a simple education."

"Remember you must die."

"She writes well and concisely, and this has tended to obscure the psychological superficiality and sheer petty malice of her content."

"The best table talk is made up of amusing but not nasty anecdotes involving other people who are, or whose names are, known to the company."

"The great lovely steep hills were all around them. The feeling of northern nature, a whole geography minding very much its own business, cautious, alien, cold and haughty, began here. The sky rolled darkly amid patches of white light. On they drove, north, north."

"The Brodie set did not for a moment doubt that she would prevail. As soon expect Julius Caesar to apply for a job at a crank school as Miss Brodie. She would never resign. If the authorities wanted to get rid of her she would have to be assassinated."

"The Scots get hilarious and hysterical. They breathe in repression. It goes with the long winter and longer winter days. Dark days."

"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."

"The one certain way for a woman to hold a man is to leave him for religion."

"There was altogether too much candor in married life; it was an indelicate modern idea, and frequently led to upsets in a household, if not divorce."

"There?s a lot of people think they can take my books and analyze me from them. On that principle Agatha Christie would be a serial killer."

"These years are still the years of my prime. It is important to recognize the years of one's prime, always remember that."

"They are demanding equal rights with us,? says Mrs. Fiedke. ?That?s why I never vote with the Liberals. Perfume, jewelry, hair down to their shoulders, and I?m not talking about the ones who were born like that. I mean, the ones that can?t help it should be put on an island. It?s the others I?m talking about. There was a time they would stand up and open the door for you. They would take their hat off. But they want their equality today. All I say is that if God had intended them to be as good as us he wouldn?t have made them different from us to the naked eye. They don?t want to be all dressed alike any more. Which is only a move against us. You couldn?t run an army like that, let alone the male sex. With all due respects to Mr. Fiedke, may he rest in peace, the male sex is getting out of hand. Of course, Mr. Fiedke knew his place as a man, give him his due.?"

"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."

"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."

"When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality."

"You must understand that everything happens for an artist, all time is redeemed, nothing is ever lost and wonders never cease."

"You're quite wrong there, Collie. One does miss sex. The body has a life of it's own. We do miss what we haven't had, you and I. Biologically. Ask Sigmund Freud. It is revealed in dreams. The absent touch of warm limbs at night, the absent"