All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects on the loss of innocence and the realization of the absurdity of past attachments.
In this quote, John Fowles uses the metaphor of realizing that dolls are just dolls to illustrate a deeper understanding of self-awareness and the bittersweet nature of growing up. By recognizing his old self as something silly and worn out, he conveys a sense of nostalgia and melancholy, recognizing the innocence lost along the way, much like discovering an old toy that has been cherished but is now just a shadow of its former value.
Themes
InnocenceSelf-AwarenessNostalgiaGrowing UpIdentity
In practice
Example use cases
In a graduation speech, to highlight the importance of reflecting on one's journey.
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.
John FowlesRead
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.
John FowlesRead
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?
John FowlesRead
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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