John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowleswas an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 March 1926
love war men
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
hope newspapers happens
The newspapers are full of what we would like to happen to us and what we hope will never happen to us.
sympathy reality historical
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.
space hatred empty
He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.
beautiful baseball football
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.
strong morning wind
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.
depression mad mental-illness
And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did.
writing dark civilization
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.
life country war
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.
life attitude men
Only fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to 'lesser' life on this planet.
music art creative
Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.
envy poor
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.
writing garden creating
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.
lonely effort sometimes
One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely.