Quotes by Muriel Spark

• I used to think it a pity that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control.
• I wouldn't take the Pope too seriously. He's a Pole first, a pope second, and maybe a Christian third.
• Parents learn a lot from their children about coping with life.
• It is impossible to repent of love. The sin of love does not exist.
• One should only see a psychiatrist out of boredom.
• I see no reason to keep silent about my enjoyment of the sound of my own voice as I work.
• If you're going to do a thing, you should do it thoroughly. If you're going to be a Christian, you may as well be a Catholic.
• It is impossible to persuade a man who does not disagree, but smiles.
• When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
• All my pupils are the creme de la creme. Give me a girl of an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.
• Art and religion first; then philosophy; lastly science. That is the order of the great subjects of life, that's their order of importance.
• 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.