Quotes About John Fowles

The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.

It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death.

The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.

He knew the world and its absurdities as only an intelligent Irishman can; which is to say that where his knowledge or memory failed him, his imagination was always ready to fill the gap.

It was not the mask I was afraid of...but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself

Your first reaction is the characteristic one of your contrasuggestible century: to disbelieve, to disprove. I see this very clearly underneath your politeness.

Now I understand why you grow so many flowers. She shifted her head, not understanding. I said, To cover the stink of sulphur.

Henry knew sin was a challenge to life; not an act of unreason, but an act of courage and determination.

He is ugliness. But you can't smash human ugliness.

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.