Explore Quotes by John Fowles

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me.

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

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

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

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

An answer is always a form of death.

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

Between skin and skin, there is only light.

Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.

The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?

I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.

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

Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependent on it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure, and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard.

I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships.

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

I am talking about the general psychological health _x000D_ of the species, man. He needs the existence of _x000D_ mysteries. Not their solution.

All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.

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

Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.

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.

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?