Quote

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.

John Fowles

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

John Fowles
Age: 79 †
Born: 1926
Born: March 31
Died: 2005
Died: November 5
Essayist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Teacher
Writer
Leigh-on-Sea
Essex
American
Primary
Simple
Republic
Free
Optimistic
Absurdly
Social
Assumption
Dominates
Sense
Myth
Injustices
Injustice
Bred
Oneself
Gross
Choose
Primaries

More quotes by John Fowles

Image
All pasts are like poems one can derive a thousand things, but not live in them.
John Fowles
Image
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
Image
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.
John Fowles
Image
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
Image
Always we try to put the wild in a cage.
John Fowles
Image
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
John Fowles
Image
I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.
John Fowles
Image
The best wines take the longest to mature.
John Fowles
Image
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.
John Fowles
Image
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
Image
Between skin and skin, there is only light.
John Fowles
Image
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.
John Fowles
Image
I read and I read and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.
John Fowles
Image
She's always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.' 'Prose and pudding?''I don't expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.
John Fowles
Image
The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?
John Fowles
Image
That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
John Fowles
Image
Love is the mystery between two people, not the identity.
John Fowles
Image
You come to the United States not knowing what to expect. Then all your worst prejudices are confirmed.
John Fowles
Image
Art is a statement of one in the face of all not a statement by one for the use of all.
John Fowles
Image
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.
John Fowles