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
effort despise
To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
cancer love-you fairy-stories
Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story.
evil pot duty
Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.
beautiful baseball war
Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base-in both senses-greed.
beautiful art passion
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?
fighting selfishness weapons
I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.
crafts majority modern
The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised.
should-have forever statements
His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now,therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad.
moon dying earth
The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.
love war men
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
god definitions
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
nature stars world
Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.
people illusion cherish
Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
beautiful hate trying
I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead.