John Fowles Quotes - Page 5

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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.

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• 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”

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• 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

• 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

• 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

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• 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”

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• 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".

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• 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”

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• We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come.

  John Fowles

  Looks, Faces, Sometimes

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

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• The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic Poetry bears no relation at all to reality. As a matter of fact, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. Who simply happens to have specialized in the mental illness that you, in your ignorance, call literature.

  John Fowles

  Writing, Ignorance, Reality

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• We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. 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, Animal, Past

  1965 The Magus, ch.24.

  4 Copy quote

• It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did

  John Fowles

  Writing, Mean, Sleep

  John Fowles (2010). “The Collector”, p.165, Random House

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• I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.

  John Fowles

  Beautiful, Hate, Trying

  John Fowles (2010). “The Collector”, p.203, Random House

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