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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
Illusion
Society
Live
People
Liking
Cherish

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Time is not a road - it is a room.
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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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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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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.
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Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
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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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The profoundest distances are never geographical.
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Being an atheist is a matter not of moral choice, but of human obligation.
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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.
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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.
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Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass give me plain glass.
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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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Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
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Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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The best wines take the longest to mature.
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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