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We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

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
Accepting
Human
Humans
Things
Decent

More quotes by 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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To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
John Fowles
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The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.
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You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.
John Fowles
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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?
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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.
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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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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All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John Fowles
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I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.
John Fowles
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I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
John Fowles
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Another reason I think the novel will survive is that the reader has to work in a novel. In a film, you are presented with someone else's imagination exactly bodied out. The marvelous thing about a novel is that every reader will imagine even the very simplest sentence slightly differently.
John Fowles
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Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
John Fowles
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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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And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did.
John Fowles
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The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours.
John Fowles
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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
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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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The best wines take the longest to mature.
John Fowles