All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
An answer is always a form of death.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that providing answers can limit understanding and exploration, as certainty can lead to an end of inquiry.
John Fowles' quote suggests that providing answers is not just about informing; it can also signify the end of exploration and curiosity. When we arrive at conclusions or definitive answers, we may cease to ask further questions, stifling the inherent human desire to discover and understand. In this way, answering can metaphorically represent a form of death, as it curtails the journey of learning and growth, replacing inquiry with finality.
Themes
AnswersDeathInquiryCuriosityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate on knowledge and certainty, one might use this quote to highlight the dangers of finality.
More from John Fowles
All quotes →There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
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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.
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Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
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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.
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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 FowlesRead
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