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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

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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
Evil
Good
Men
Tragedy
Courage
Millions

More quotes by John Fowles

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We chase the reward, we get the reward and then we discover that the true reward is always the next reward. Buying pleasure is a false end.
John Fowles
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That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
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Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
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The great majority of modern third-person narration is I narration very thinly disguised.
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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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Content is a word unknown to life it is also a word unknown to man.
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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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The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.
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Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles and personally I hate those walls most when they are made by literature and art.
John Fowles
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Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
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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Our knowledge of what the richer than ourselves possess, and the poor do not, has never been more widespread. Therefore, envy, which is wanting what others have, and jealousy, which is not wanting others to have what one has, have never been more widespread.
John Fowles
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You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.
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Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
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To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.
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If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today.
John Fowles
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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
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There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.
John Fowles
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We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
John Fowles
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Time is not a road - it is a room.
John Fowles