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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.

E. M. Forster

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E. M. Forster
Age: 91 †
Born: 1879
Born: January 1
Died: 1970
Died: June 7
Biographer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
London
England
Edward Morgan Forster
E Forster
EM Forster
Character
Learning
Guides
Triviality
Come
Seen
Obstacles
Haze
Needs
Alive
Remain
Dissolve
World
Fighting
Characters
Readiness
Lasts
Poetry
Novelist
Last
Unless
Explaining
Artist
Fight
Novelists
Cannot
Wants
Guide
Trivialities

More quotes by E. M. Forster

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Ah, but you see, I didn't want to be fair.
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As her time in Florence drew to a close she was only at ease amongst those to whom she felt indifferent.
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At times our need for a sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we may have to pay for it afterwards.
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The work of art assumes the existence of the perfect spectator, and is indifferent to the fact that no such person exists.
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Life - No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
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Don't be mysterious there isn't the time.
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The so called white races are really pinko-grey.
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In the creative state a man is taken out of himself.
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...the true spirit of gastronomic joylessness. Porridge fills the Englishman up, and prunes clear him out.
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Books have to be read it is the only way of discovering what they contain.
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I believe we shall come to care about people less and less, Helen. The more people one knows, the easier it becomes to replace them. It's one of the curses of London. I quite expect to end my life caring most for a place.
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There's never any great risk as long as you have money.
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He had shown her all the workings of his soul, mistaking this for love.
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Creative writers are always greater than the causes that they represent.
E. M. Forster
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The historian must have some conception of how men who are not historians behave. Otherwise he will move in a world of the dead. He can only gain that conception through personal experience, and he can only use his personal experiences when he is a genius.
E. M. Forster
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Riposte of that old lady in the anecdote who was accused by her nieces of being illogical, Logic! Good gracious! What rubbish! How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
E. M. Forster
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When love flies it is remembered not as love but as something else. Blessed are the uneducated, who forget it entirely, and are never conscious of folly or pruriency in the past, of long aimless conversations.
E. M. Forster
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I do not believe in Belief.
E. M. Forster
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He doesn't want you to be real, and to think and to live. He doesn't love you. But I love you. I want you to have your own thoughts and ideas and feelings, even when I hold you in my arms.
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English literature is a flying fish.
E. M. Forster