Quotes from John Fowles

a metaphysical sense of being marooned

He stood before the famous Rembrandt self portrait. The sad, proud old man stared eternally out of his canvas, out of the entire knowledge of his own genius and of the inadequacy of genius before human reality.

Tenho, com frequência, uma estranha ilusão: julgo que me tomei surda. Cuido então de fazer um ruído para saber que não é verdade. Tenho de tossir, por exemplo, para verificar que ouço normalmente. É como a mocinha japonesa que encontraram nas ruínas de Hiroshima. Estava tudo morto, e ela cantava para a sua boneca.

He said, it's rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. It's

For you I'll always be Alison who slept around. That Australian girl who had an abortion. The human boomerang. Throw her away and she'll always come back for another weekend of cheap knock.

PoÅ£i s? ascunzi o crim? folosind cuvinte. Dar pictura este ca o fereastr? cu vedere direct? pân? în str?fundul inimii tale. Tu nu ai f?cut aici decât s? construieÅŸti o mulÅ£ime de ferestruici spre o inim? plin? de tablourile altor pictori la mod?.

Ama Tanr? dualar? duymaz. O'nda duymak veya görmek veya ac?mak veya yard?m etmek gibi insanl?ktan eser yoktur.

I could offer no consolation and I do not think he wanted any.

Totul s-a întâmplat din cauza muzicii. VariaÈ›iunile Goldberg. Spre fârÈ™it, una din ele, foarte lent?. foarte simpl?, foarte trist?, a fost atât de frumoas?, încât nici cuvintele, nici desenul, nici chiar altceva nu o pot descrie, ci numai muzica. Frumoas? în lumina lunii. Muzica lunii, atât de argintie, atât de îndep?rtat?, atât de nobil?.

There were even times I thought I would forget her. But forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me.

It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and although I couldn't have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery.

My only happiness is when I sleep. When I wake, the nightmare begins. I feel cast on a desert island, imprisoned, condemned, and I know not what crime it is for.

Laziness, I am afraid, was Charles's distinguishing trait.

Güzel resim yapma bilgisi, akademik ve teknik anlamda, bir ressamda aranan niteliklerin sonuncusudur.

One kind of person is engaged in society without realizing it; another kind engages in society by controlling it. The one is a gear, a cog, and the other an engineer, a driver. But a person who has opted out has only his ability to express his disengagement between his existence and nothingness

He knew he was overfastidious. But how could one write history with Macaulay so close behind? Fiction or poetry, in the midst of the greatest galaxy of talent in the history of English literature? How could one be a creative scientist, with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman, with Disraeli and Gladstone polarizing all the available space? You will see that Charles set his sights high. Intelligent idlers always have, in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence.

It was no good my knowing that old men have conned young ones like that ever since time began. I still fell for it, as one still falls for the oldest literary devices in the right hands and contexts.

Boredom, the numbing, annual predictability of life hung over the staff like a cloud. And it was real boredom, not my modish ennui. From it flowed cant, hypocrisy, and the impotent rage of the old who know they have failed and the young who suspect that 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

and then politely asked me who I was, and fulsomely, where I had learnt such excellent French. We exchanged a few sentences. He himself was here for only a day or two. He wasn't French, he said, but Belgian. He found Phraxos 'pittoresque, mais moins belle que Délos'.

Bir budalan?n düÅŸtüÄŸü yüksekliÄŸin öfkesiyle ölçüldüÄŸünü biliyordum.

We are not even living in the past here. We are in the pluperfect

It may have something to do with intelligence, but I am certain it has nothing to do with knowledge - I mean that there are people who have an instinctive yet perfect moral judgment, who can perform the most complex ethical calculations as Indian peasants can sometimes perform astounding mathematical feats in a matter of seconds. Lily was such a person. And I craved her approval.

They did not kiss. They could not. How can you mercilessly imprison all natural sexual instinct for twenty years and then not expect the prisoner to be racked by sobs when the doors are thrown open?

I left a pause. 'You sound like a certain kind of surgeon. A lot more interested in the operation than the patient.' 'I should not like to be in the hands of a surgeon who did not take that view.