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If you want to be true to life, start lying about it

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
Start
Lying
True
Life

More quotes by John Fowles

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There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.
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Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
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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.
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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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The great majority of modern third-person narration is I narration very thinly disguised.
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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.
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Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.
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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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Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.
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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.
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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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The pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented.
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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.
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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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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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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Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.
John Fowles
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One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely.
John Fowles
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It is not only species of animal that die out, but whole species of feeling. And if you are wise you will never pity the past for what it did not know, but pity yourself for what it did.
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