All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Action is necessary to achieve beliefs; mere discussion is not enough.
This quote emphasizes the importance of taking action rather than simply talking about one's intentions or beliefs. It suggests that without action, ideas remain unfulfilled, much like boasting about future accomplishments without ever undertaking them. Fowles critiques the ineffectiveness of mere words and encourages individuals to act decisively on their beliefs.
Themes
ActionBeliefMotivationEffortIntent
In practice
Example use cases
Use this quote in a motivational speech about the importance of taking initiative.
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?
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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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