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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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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Live
People
Liking
Cherish
Illusion
Society

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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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I knew words were like chains, they held me back . . . the act of description taints the description.
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We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
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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.
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I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.
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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.
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One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely.
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He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.
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Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
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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.
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If you want to be true to life, start lying about it
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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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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.
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When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies
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My hatred of crowds, the obviousness of crowds, of anything en masse. Is this why I like little-known books? A general desire to escape the main world.
John Fowles
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Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependent on it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure, and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard.
John Fowles
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Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.
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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
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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