Quotes by John Fowles

People wont admit it, theyre too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They cant see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That theres always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness.The black and the black and the black.

The river of life, of mysterious laws and mysterious choice, flows past a deserted embankment; and along that other deserted embankment Charles now begins to pace, a man behind the invisible gun carriage on which rests his own corpse. He walks towards an imminent, self-given death? I think not; for he has at which to build; has already begun, though he would still bitterly deny it, thought there are tears in his eyes to support his denial, to realize that life, however advantageously Sarah may in some ways seem to fit the role of Sphinx, is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the citys iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumbd, salt, estranging sea.

Its despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. Its despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. Its despair that so few of us care. Its despair that theres so much brutality and callousness in the world. Its despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because theyve won a lot of money. And then do what youve done to me.

The height the dupe has fallen is measured by his anger.

Youre not me. You cant feel like I feel.I can feel.No you cant. You just choose not to feel or something and everythings fine.Its not fine. Its just not so bad.

Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it cant have affected you.

I hate beyond hate.

Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.

If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.

...there are times when silence is a poem.

I could scream abuse at him all day long; he wouldnt mind at all. Its me he wants, my look, my outside; not my emotions or my mind or my soul or even my body. Not anything human.

And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you.

Its like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see its silly. A toy Ive played with too often. Its a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.

That is how war corrupts us. It plays on our pride in our own free will.

Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant’s Whore.

...and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candour of the satanically fallen. ~ The French Lieutenant’s Woman

Its despair at the lack of (Im cheating, I didnt say all these things - but Im going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. Its despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. Its despair that so few of us care. Its despair that theres so much brutality and callousness in the world.

So that the smile was not so much an attitude to be taken to life as the nature of the cruelty of life, a cruelty we cannot even choose to avoid, since it is human existence.

Because they died, we know we still live. Because a star explodes and a thousand worlds like ours die, we know this world is. That is the smile: that what might not be, is.

People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; its no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green.