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It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.

John Fowles

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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Dies
Feelings
Past
Whole
Pity
Never
Species
Wise
Animal
Feeling

More quotes by John Fowles

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Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.
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You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.
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We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away.
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The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.
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The profoundest distances are never geographical.
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You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.
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I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.
John Fowles
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I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
John Fowles
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He is solid immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.
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I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
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It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
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He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.
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All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
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Science disembodies art embodies.
John Fowles
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Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
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There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
John Fowles
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Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.
John Fowles
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That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
John Fowles
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There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
John Fowles
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Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.
John Fowles