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Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest 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
Whatever
Evil
Good
Pot
Holds
Duty
Greatest

More quotes by John Fowles

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The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself and this absurdly optimistic assumption so dominates the republic that it has bred all its gross social injustices.
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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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Ask me to marry you. Will you marry me? No.
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All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
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The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic Poetry bears no relation at all to reality. As a matter of fact, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. Who simply happens to have specialized in the mental illness that you, in your ignorance, call literature.
John Fowles
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If you want to be true to life, start lying about it
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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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Between skin and skin, there is only light.
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I hate the uneducated and the ignorant. I hate the pompous and the phoney. I hate the jealous and the resentful. I hate the crabbed and mean and the petty. I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.
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The great majority of modern third-person narration is I narration very thinly disguised.
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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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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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It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.
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There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
John Fowles
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Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are.
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.
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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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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.
John Fowles
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Adulthood is not an age, but a stage of knowledge of self.
John Fowles
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The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.
John Fowles