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
winter essence civilization
In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.
sex men distinction
That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects.
sex real war
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.
war numbers people
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.
modern aphorism generalization
An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.
drinking water excellence
Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
fixed plans accidents
Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.
love-is two people
Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
writing doubt mind
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.
years months monsters
Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.
effort green cynicism
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.
acceptance self choices
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.
want goes-on hollow
I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
pairs lone-wolf myth
Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.