Ainda Iris

Thus began my life with Iris Murdoch, the writer, decades before I met her. I read everything she wrote, often twice - the only way, according to Nabokov. Sentences were sometimes learnt by heart, such as:
"Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason" - the opening line of The Bell.

My favourites -
"There are perhaps times in a man's life when there is no substitute for the discipline of guilt" (it's the word discipline that gives that sentence its sharpness) and
"We cannot altogether evade responsibility for the subtle chains of moral failure which bring about the evil we swear we never intended" - are true Murdoch, tough on the self, rather than others. They come from her masterpiece, The Black Prince.

My desire to produce the book as a play in the West End was the catalyst for me finally meeting Iris Murdoch, on December 19, 1984, in the Connaught Hotel, London. It was a meeting we were to celebrate each year, until her illness made it impossible.

Iris sat on one of the very grand chairs in the very grand lounge, smiling at me as, hugely pregnant, I stumbled towards her. "Hello Josephine," she said. "I'm Irish, too."

(Josephine Hart relembra Iris)

"Marriage," she once wrote, "is a long conversation." So is friendship.

Aqui