John Fowles Quotes - Page 5

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• In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

  John Fowles

  Winter, Essence, Civilization

  1969 The French Lieutenant's Woman, ch.10.

  15 Copy quote

• It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

  John Fowles

  Wise, Past, Animal

  1965 The Magus, ch.24.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Fowles

  Sex, Real, War

  1965 The Magus, ch.52.

  8 Copy quote

• Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.

  John Fowles

  Passion, Want, Paradox

  "The Aristos: A Self-Portrait in Ideas". Book by John Fowles, 1964.

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• Between skin and skin, there is only light.

  John Fowles

  Light, Skins

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

  4 Copy quote

• The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.

  John Fowles

  Autumn, Smell, Lakes

  14 Copy quote

• He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.

  John Fowles

  Wall, Thinking, Glasses

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

  4 Copy quote

• We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away.

  John Fowles

  Wind, Cobwebs, Hours

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

  13 Copy quote

• Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded.

  John Fowles

  Educational, Successful, Soldier

  5 Copy quote

• When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies

  John Fowles

  Photograph, Draws, Dies

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

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Fowles

  Strong, Morning, Wind

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

  7 Copy quote

• His statement to himself should have been, 'I possess this now, therefore I am happy', instead of what it so Victorianly was: "I cannot possess this for ever, and therefore am sad."

  John Fowles

  Should Have, Forever, Has Beens

  "The French Lieutenant's Woman".

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  John Fowles

  Acceptance, Self, Choices

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

  8 Copy quote

• You're not me. You can't feel like I feel." "I can feel." "No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine." "It's not fine. It's just not so bad.

  John Fowles

  Fine, Feels, I Can

  John Fowles (1965). “The Magus”

  7 Copy quote

• Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present.

  John Fowles

  Children, Real, Writing

  John Fowles (1985). “A Maggot”, Jonathan Cape

  4 Copy quote

• If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today.

  John Fowles

  Hate, Love You, Forget Everything

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

  4 Copy quote

• One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true

  John Fowles

  Order, Opposites, Rose

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

  4 Copy quote

• The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised.

  John Fowles

  Majority, Crafts, Modern

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• That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects.

  John Fowles

  Sex, Men, Distinction

  1965 The Magus, ch.52.

  7 Copy quote

• If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.

  John Fowles

  Hurt, Silence, Might

  4 Copy quote

• It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.

  John Fowles

  Silly, Self, Dolls

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

  4 Copy quote

• All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.

  John Fowles

  Past, Poetry, Thousand

  John Fowles, Barry Brukoff (1980). “The Enigma of Stonehenge”, Simon & Schuster

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• 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.

  John Fowles

  Sympathy, Reality, Historical

  John Fowles (1970). “The Aristos”, Signet Book

  5 Copy quote

• An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.

  John Fowles

  Modern, Aphorism, Generalization

  John Fowles (2009). “The Journals: Volume 1: 1949-1965”, p.433, Northwestern University Press

  4 Copy quote

• That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.

  John Fowles

  Romance, Mystery, Trouble

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

  4 Copy quote

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