John Fowles Quotes - Page 4

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• Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?

  John Fowles

  Drinking, Water, Excellence

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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

  John Fowles

  Personality, Lines, Paint

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Art, Men, Essentials

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Real, Character, Independent

  JOHN FOWLES (1969). “THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT'S WOMAN”

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• I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes 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. Do you understand?

  John Fowles

  Life, Country, Laughter

  "The Magus".

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Age, Failing, Virtue

  John Fowles (1977). “Daniel Martin”, Jonathan Cape

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• Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation.

  John Fowles

  Sight, Desolation, Whole

  John Fowles (1977). “Daniel Martin”, Jonathan Cape

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Writing, Doubt, Mind

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

  John Fowles

  Pairs, Lone Wolf, Myth

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

  John Fowles

  Description, Chains

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.

  John Fowles

  Men, Mask, Pronouns

  JOHN FOWLES (1969). “THE FRENCH LIEUTENTANT'S WOMAN”

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• Edith Sitwell's interest in art was largely confined to portraits of herself.

  John Fowles

  Art, Portraits, Interest

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Optimistic, Simple, Republic

  John Fowles (1977). “Daniel Martin”, Jonathan Cape

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

  John Fowles

  Hope, Newspapers, Happens

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• The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time.

  John Fowles

  Misery, Century, Lack Of Time

  JOHN FOWLES (1969). “THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN”

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

  John Fowles

  Voice, Choices, Speak

  John Fowles (1963). “The collector”

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• Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

  John Fowles

  Limits, Accepting, Ought

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  War, Psychosis, Historical

  John Fowles (1968). “The Magus”, Pan

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Views, Ideas, People

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.

  John Fowles

  Moon, Dying, Earth

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Writing, Dark, Civilization

  1969 The French Lieutenant's Woman, ch.19.

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• The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love.

  John Fowles

  Live By

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Love, Memories, War

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

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

  John Fowles

  Beautiful, Said, Ifs

  John Fowles (1963). “The collector”

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• Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.

  John Fowles

  Glasses, Giving, Stained Glass

  John Fowles (2010). “Wormholes”, p.25, Random House

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