E. M. Forster
E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM CHwas an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect ... ". His 1908 novel, A Room with a View, is his most optimistic work, while A Passage to Indiabrought him his greatest success. He was...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 January 1879
This element of surprise or mystery - the detective element as it is sometimes rather emptily called - is of great importance in a plot. It occurs through a suspension of the time-sequence; a mystery is a pocket in time, and it occurs crudely, as in "Why did the queen die?" and more subtly in half-explained gestures and words, the true meaning of which only dawns pages ahead. Mystery is essential to plot, and cannot be appreciated without intelligence. ... To appreciate a mystery, part of the mind must be left behind, brooding, while the other part goes marching on.
I love love I love being in love I don't care what it does to me The Format, in "Inches and Failing". Masood, a young lady has fallen in love with me-at least so I judge from her letters. Awkward is it not-awkward and surprising. You would be flattered and twirl your moustache, but I am merely uncomfortable. I wish she would stop, as she is very nice, and I enjoyed being friends. What an ill constructed world this is! Love is always being given where it is not required.
He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.
But I have seen my obstacles: trivialities, learning and poetry. This last needs explaining: the old artist's readiness to dissolve characters into a haze. Characters cannot come alive and fight and guide the world unless the novelist wants them to remain characters.
Growing old is an emotion which comes over us at almost any age; I had it myself between the ages of 25 and 30.
Man can learn everything if he will but try.
Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.
When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.
...though nothing is damaged, everything is changed.
There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
Men were not gods after all, but as human and as clumsy as girls.
You talk as if a god had made the Machine," cried the other. "I believe that you pray to it when you are unhappy. Men made it, do not forget that. Great men, but men. The Machine is much, but not everything.
Sudden conversion ... is particularly attractive to the half-baked mind.
Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.