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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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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Mask
Green
Failure
Short
Masks
Greatest
Impotence
Effort
Cope
Cynicism
Despise
More quotes by John Fowles
Ask me to marry you. Will you marry me? No.
John Fowles
Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.
John Fowles
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.
John Fowles
These last few days I've felt Godless. I've felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in a God. But he's so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God. Prayer and worship and singing hymns-all silly and useless.
John Fowles
We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
John Fowles
I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
John Fowles
That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.
John Fowles
If you want to be true to life, start lying about it
John Fowles
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 for ever, and therefore am sad.
John Fowles
Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present.
John Fowles
When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies
John Fowles
Content is a word unknown to life it is also a word unknown to man.
John Fowles
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
John Fowles
That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
John Fowles
I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
John Fowles
I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead and she was singing to her doll.
John Fowles
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
There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.
John Fowles
Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.
John Fowles
I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always goes to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Do you understand?
John Fowles