Quotes from John Fowles

Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

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?

They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love. They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

there are times when silence is a poem.

There are many reasons why novelists write but they all have one thing in common a need to create an alternative world.

I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel.

He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.

His statement to himself should have been 'I possess this now,therefore I am happy' , instead of what it so Victorianly was: 'I cannot possess this forever, therefore I am sad.

We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. 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.

all cynicism masks a failure to cope.

You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.

What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.

You're not me. You can't feel like I feel. I can feel. No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine. It's not fine. It's just not so bad.

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.

The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.

The best wines take the longest to mature.

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

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.

That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage to be good.

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.

8. You hate the political buisness of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don't have time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don't go to silly films, even if you want to; you don't read cheap newspapers; you don't listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don't waste time talking about nothing. You use your life.

I'm only happy when I forget to exist. When just my eyes or my ears or my skin exist.