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
forget happens
Forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn’t happen to me.
allowed belong burning cannot creatures felt form glad imagine might reality seemed single survive
So I felt this burning summer. In form I might belong to humankind; in reality I seemed one of a ravenous self-destroying horde of rats. I am glad there is no God. If there were, I cannot imagine that we rampant, myopic, and insatiably self-centred creatures should be allowed to survive a single day more
real two different
All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
life philosophy important
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.
attitude lying thinking
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.
time rooms
Time is not a road - it is a room.
acceptance accepting-yourself there-comes-a-time
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.
trying cages environment
Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
beautiful thinking space
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.
mean one-day wish
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.
kings reality long
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.
night risk lasts
The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?
mirrors suffering greece
Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.
sight desolation whole
Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation.