Top quotes by John Fowles

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. Votes: 14

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. Votes: 14

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. Votes: 13

If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today. Votes: 10

Ask me to marry you." "Will you marry me?" "No. Votes: 9

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man. Votes: 8

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me. Votes: 8

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world. Votes: 8

She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls. Votes: 8

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters. Votes: 7

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death. Votes: 7

Medieval theologians used to dispute how the angels in the heaven spent their time, when not balancing on needle points and singing anthems to the Lord. I know. They slump glued to their clouds, glasses at the ready, as the Archangel Micheal (that well-known slasher) and stonewalling St Peter open against the Devils XI. It could not be Heaven, otherwise. Votes: 7

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. Votes: 6

Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed. Votes: 6

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them. Votes: 5

Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth. Votes: 5

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time. Votes: 4

A total stranger, and one not of one's sex, is often the least prejudiced judge. Votes: 4

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man." Votes: 4

For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most. Votes: 3

The more abhorrent a news item the more comforting it was to be the recipient, since the fact that it had happened elsewhere proved that it had not happened here, was not happening here, and would therefore never happen here. Votes: 3

The best wines take the longest to mature. Votes: 3

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self.You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good. Votes: 2

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud. Votes: 2

These last few days I've felt Godless. I've felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he's so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns-all silly and useless. Votes: 2

I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. Votes: 2

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal. Votes: 2

I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. Votes: 2

On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult. Votes: 2

It is not the state of war that isolates. It is well known, it brings people together. But in the battlefield -- that is something different.Because that is when the real enemy, death, appears. I no longer saw any warmth in numbers. I saw only Thanatos in them, my death. And just as much in my own comrades, in Montague, as in the invisible Germans. Votes: 1

My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world. Votes: 0

Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time. Votes: 0

The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented. Votes: 0

I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little. Votes: 0

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. Votes: 0

Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say 'I do not know the time' . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real. Votes: 0

Your first reaction is the characteristic one of your contrasuggestible century: to disbelieve, to disprove. I see this very clearly underneath your politeness. Votes: 0

I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful. Votes: 0

I'm only happy when I forget to exist. When just my eyes or my ears or my skin exist. Votes: 0

Now I understand why you grow so many flowers."She shifted her head, not understanding.I said, "To cover the stink of sulphur. Votes: 0

Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you. Votes: 0

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is. Votes: 0

Stop thinking about class, she'd say. Like a rich man telling a poor man to stop thinking about money. Votes: 0

There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves. Votes: 0

Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society. Votes: 0

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. Votes: 0

When she went out she used to wear a lot of eye shadow, which married with the sulky way she sometimes held her mouth to give her a characteristic bruised look; a look that subtly made one want to bruise her more. Votes: 0

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction. Votes: 0

We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away. Votes: 0

The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing. Votes: 0

Death is not in the nature of things; it is the nature of things. But what dies is the form. The matter is immortal. Votes: 0

The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity. Votes: 0

I knew that on that island one was driven back into the past. There was so much space, so much silence, so few meetings that one too easily saw out of the present, and then the past seemed ten times closer than it was. Votes: 0

To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. Votes: 0

Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass. Votes: 0

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art. Votes: 0

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be. Votes: 0

That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects. Votes: 0

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. Votes: 0

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid. Votes: 0

Another reason I think the novel will survive is that the reader has to work in a novel. In a film, you are presented with someone else's imagination exactly bodied out. The marvelous thing about a novel is that every reader will imagine even the very simplest sentence slightly differently. Votes: 0

But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge. Votes: 0

Time is not a road - it is a room. Votes: 0

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies Votes: 0

...all cynicism masks a failure to cope. Votes: 0

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive. Votes: 0

The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for. Votes: 0

Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is. Votes: 0

The profoundest distances are never geographical. Votes: 0

His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now,therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad. Votes: 0

It came to me"¦that I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing"¦a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice. Votes: 0

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed." "I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self." "You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good. Votes: 0

Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. Votes: 0

You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. Votes: 0

Science disembodies; art embodies. Votes: 0

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that's the lot. There's no mercy in things. There's not even a Great Beyond. There's nothing. Votes: 0

People knew less of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more. But I am a heretic, I think our ancestors' isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. The world is only too literally too much with us now. Votes: 0

Always we try to put the wild in a cage. Votes: 0

I am infinitely strange to myself. Votes: 0

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one. Votes: 0

Forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me. Votes: 0

Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation. Votes: 0

It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. Votes: 0

You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me. Votes: 0

The word is the most imprecise of signs. Only a science-obsessed age could fail to comprehend that this is its great virtue, not its defect. Votes: 0

I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality. Votes: 0

Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded. Votes: 0

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices. Votes: 0

Edith Sitwell's interest in art was largely confined to portraits of herself. Votes: 0

I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries. Not their solution. Votes: 0

I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description. Votes: 0

There are two kinds of hangover: in one you feel ill and incapable, in the other you feel ill and lucid. Votes: 0

To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. Votes: 0

He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. Votes: 0

The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic Poetry bears no relation at all to reality. As a matter of fact, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. Who simply happens to have specialized in the mental illness that you, in your ignorance, call literature. Votes: 0

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist. Votes: 0

An easterly is the most disagreeable wind in Lyme Bay "” Lyme Bay being that largest bite from the underside of England's outstretched southwestern leg "” and a person of curiosity could at once have deduced several strong probabilities about the pair who began to walk down the quay at Lyme Regis, the small but ancient eponym of the inbite, one incisively sharp and blustery morning in the late March of 1867. Votes: 0

Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self. Votes: 0

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit. Votes: 0

Art is a statement of one in the face of all; not a statement by one for the use of all. Votes: 0

There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally. Votes: 0

Man is about to be deprived of a great pole - work routine. The nightmare of capitalist society is unemployment; the nightmare of cybernetic society will be employment. Votes: 0

The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden. Votes: 0

How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old? Votes: 0

All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them. Votes: 0

even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph. Votes: 0

An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern. Votes: 0

Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule. Votes: 0

One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely. Votes: 0

Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation. Votes: 0

Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was. This is why we cannot plan. We know a world is an organism, not a machine. We also know that a genuinely created world must be independent of its creator; a planned world (a world that fully reveals its planning) is a dead world. It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. Votes: 0

Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity. Votes: 0

If you want to be true to life, start lying about it Votes: 0

Our knowledge of what the richer than ourselves possess, and the poor do not, has never been more widespread. Therefore, envy, which is wanting what others have, and jealousy, which is not wanting others to have what one has, have never been more widespread. Votes: 0

Which are you drinking? The water or the wave? Votes: 0

No amount of reading and intelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience. Votes: 0

The price of tapping water into every house is that no one values water any more. Votes: 0

The privileges of knowledge have to be bought at the cost of the consolations of ignorance. Votes: 0

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true Votes: 0

That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance. Votes: 0

People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; it's no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green. Votes: 0

We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. It is not only species of animal that die out. But whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know. But pity yourself for what it did. Votes: 0

It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly. Votes: 0

It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did Votes: 0

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. Votes: 0

If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence. Votes: 0

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good. Votes: 0

If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her. Votes: 0

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story. Votes: 0

I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll. Votes: 0

Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that? Votes: 0

But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating. Votes: 0

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment. Votes: 0

The world began in hazard and will end in it. Votes: 0

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good. Votes: 0

We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that. Votes: 0

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things - as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning-flash. Votes: 0

I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel. Votes: 0

That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women seetherelationship between objects? It is an extra dimension of feeling which we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women?and absurd. Votes: 0

I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased. Votes: 0

The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves. Votes: 0

Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived. Votes: 0

The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love. Votes: 0

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours. Votes: 0

Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically. Votes: 0

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all. Votes: 0

You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form. Votes: 0

We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come. Votes: 0

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical. Votes: 0

I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry. Votes: 0

The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night? Votes: 0

We chase the reward, we get the reward and then we discover that the true reward is always the next reward. Buying pleasure is a false end. Votes: 0

I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships. Votes: 0

They're beautiful. But sad.' Everything's sad if you make it so, I said. Votes: 0

We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. Votes: 0

The ordinary man is the curse of civilization. Votes: 0

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them. Votes: 0

I suppose I'd had, by the standards of that pre-permissive time, a good deal of sex for my age. Girls, or a certain kind of girl, liked me; I had a car-not so common among undergraduates in those days-and I had some money. I wasn't ugly; and even more important, I had my loneliness, which, as every cad knows, is a deadly weapon with women. My 'technique' was to make a show of unpredictability, cynicism, and indifference. Then, like a conjurer with his white rabbit, I produced the solitary heart. Votes: 0

Death is the room that is always empty. Votes: 0

Between skin and skin, there is only light. Votes: 0

Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are. Votes: 0

It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did. Votes: 0

It was too exactly as imagined to be true. But I felt as gladly and expectantly disorientated, as happily and alertly alone, as Alice in Wonderland. Votes: 0

He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass. Votes: 0

He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap. Votes: 0

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me. Votes: 0

And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did. Votes: 0

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base - in both senses - greed. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus. Votes: 0

He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human. Votes: 0

Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities. Votes: 0

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive. Votes: 0

I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. Votes: 0

Only fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to 'lesser' life on this planet. Votes: 0

The newspapers are full of what we would like to happen to us and what we hope will never happen to us. Votes: 0

Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present. Votes: 0

Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependant upon it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure; and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard. You may die before you turn the next page. Votes: 0

The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised. Votes: 0