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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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John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
Desire
Masse
Littles
Crowds
Anything
Escape
Little
Main
Book
Hatred
Like
General
World
Books
Known
Obviousness

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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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Art is a statement of one in the face of all not a statement by one for the use of all.
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There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
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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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Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
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We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
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I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead and she was singing to her doll.
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One degrades oneself sometimes in the effort not to be lonely.
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Follow the accident, fear the fixed plan--that is the rule.
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I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
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If you want to be true to life, start lying about it
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Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass give me plain glass.
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The profoundest distances are never geographical.
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To despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.
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The great majority of modern third-person narration is I narration very thinly disguised.
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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.
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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.
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Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story.
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He is solid immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.
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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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