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
god religious prayer
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.
real character independent
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.
world leisure
There cannot be any true leisure until all the world possesses it equally.
self ruins
How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old?
hangover two kind
There are two kinds of hangover: in one you feel ill and incapable, in the other you feel ill and lucid.
self age adulthood
Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.
rooms empty
Death is the room that is always empty.
rewards buying next
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.
comforting news facts
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.
atheist choices atheism
Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.
book hatred desire
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.
optimistic simple republic
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.
glasses giving stained-glass
Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.
passion want paradox
Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.