John Fowles quotes - page 2

So I strode down to the school like some vengence-brewing chieftain in an Icelandic saga... (John Fowles)
(The staff common room) was real boredom, not just modish ennui. Boredom, the numbing annual predictability of life, hung over the staff like a cloud. From it flowed cant, hypocrisy, and the impotent rage of the old who know they have failed and the young who suspect they will fail. The senior masters stood like Gallows sermons; with some of them one had a sort of vertigo, a glimpse of the bottomless pit of human futility...a sere notifier of what is. View quote
John Fowles
That's all. Just paint. That's my advice. Leave the clever talk to the poor sods who can't. View quote
John Fowles
I felt both a state of envy and contempt. The yacht itself was not vulgar, but I smelt something vulgar about owning it...A few moments later I set off back to my dull daily penal colony of an existence on the far side of the dream, as Adam left the Garden of Eden perhaps...except I knew there were no Gods, and nothing was going to bar my return... View quote
John Fowles
The profoundest distances are never geographical. View quote
John Fowles
That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good. View quote
John Fowles
Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society. View quote
John Fowles
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that? View quote
John Fowles
Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive. View quote
John Fowles
In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters. View quote
John Fowles
Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.' To live alone?' To live. With what you are. (John Fowles)
The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We're so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we're stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can't stand ours. View quote
John Fowles
It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live. View quote
John Fowles
The ordinary man is the curse of civilization. View quote
John Fowles
He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal. View quote
John Fowles
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. View quote
John Fowles
If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her. View quote
John Fowles
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. View quote
John Fowles
They're beautiful. But sad.' Everything's sad if you make it so, I said. View quote
John Fowles
The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night? View quote
John Fowles
You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint. The most terrible bad form. (John Fowles)
I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased. View quote
John Fowles
I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. View quote
John Fowles
You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me. View quote
John Fowles
When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies. View quote
John Fowles