All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that our experiences of pleasure and enjoyment are influenced by the unpredictable nature of life.
John Fowles reflects on the inherent uncertainty or 'hazard' of life, arguing that even our carefully planned pleasures ultimately hinge on unpredictability. This idea highlights the delicate interplay between our expectations and the uncontrollable elements of existence, suggesting that while we seek joy, it is never fully within our grasp due to the risks and uncertainties that surround us.
Themes
HazardPleasureUncertaintyLifeEnjoyment
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion on the unpredictability of life's pleasures during a motivational speech.
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.
John FowlesRead
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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