All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects a deep acceptance of oneself, regardless of life's struggles or emptiness.
John Fowles expresses a profound understanding of self-acceptance and resilience in the face of personal emptiness and struggle. It suggests a commitment to living authentically and acknowledges the inevitability of suffering and disease in life, yet emphasizes the importance of choosing to continue living with oneself through all circumstances.
Themes
Self-AcceptanceResilienceAuthenticityPersonal Struggle
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a personal empowerment seminar to encourage self-acceptance.
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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