John Fowles
John Fowles
John Robert Fowleswas an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth31 March 1926
reading intelligent experience
No amount of reading and intelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience.
water house tapping
The price of tapping water into every house is that no one values water any more.
passion want paradox
Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.
winter essence civilization
In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.
war numbers people
even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.
modern aphorism generalization
An aphorism is a generalization, therefore not modern.
past poetry thousand
All pasts are like poems; one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.
corny pretending duty
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
writing reading-poetry poetry
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
sex real war
That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women seetherelationship between objects? It is an extra dimension of feeling which we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women?and absurd.
sex men distinction
That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects.
want accepting decent
We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
men civilization ordinary
The ordinary man is the curse of civilization.
time perfect humanity
The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that, not a disinterested love of science, and certainly not wisdom, is why we devote such a huge proportion of the ingenuity and income of our societies to finding faster ways of doing things - as if the final aim of mankind was to grow closer not to a perfect humanity, but to a perfect lightning-flash.