John Fowles quotes

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid. (John Fowles)
The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself. View quote
John Fowles
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. View quote
John Fowles
In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me. View quote
John Fowles
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. View quote
John Fowles
Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical. View quote
John Fowles
Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. View quote
John Fowles
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. View quote
John Fowles
I am infinitely strange to myself. View quote
John Fowles
There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world. View quote
John Fowles
The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud. (John Fowles)
I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short and to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all... View quote
John Fowles
...even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph. View quote
John Fowles
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence. View quote
John Fowles
That is the truth. Not the hammer and sickle. Not the stars and stripes. Not the cross. Not the sun. Not gold. Not yin and yang. View quote
John Fowles
I am talking about the general psychological health of the species, man. He needs the existence of mysteries, not their solution. View quote
John Fowles
We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that. View quote
John Fowles
The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love. View quote
John Fowles
You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. View quote
John Fowles
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. View quote
John Fowles
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. (John Fowles)
Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. View quote
John Fowles
Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth. View quote
John Fowles
...all cynicism masks a failure to cope. View quote
John Fowles
I didn't know at that time Emily Dickinson's great definition, her 'Publication is not the business of poets'; being a poet is all, being known as a poet is nothing. View quote
John Fowles