Quotes By Author: John Fowles

“Time in itself, absolutely, does not exist; it is always relative to some observer or some object. Without a clock I say ‘I do not know the time’ . Without matter time itself is unknowable. Time is a function of matter; and matter therefore is the clock that makes infinity real.”

“Я мог бы влюбиться в неё по уши и стал бы невыносимо требовательным, предъявляя на неё собственные права; но я слишком часто грешил этим прежде, чтобы не знать, что стремление лишить партнёра независимости прямым путём ведёт к беде. Желание обладать тесно связано с желанием изменить, переделать; а она очень нравилась мне такой, какой была. Так же как фраза «Я верю в Бога» часто означает просто «Я верю, что нет необходимости думать», слова «Я тебя люблю» слишком часто оказываются иносказанием «Я хочу обладать тобою».”

“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. And my feelings, at the end of that wretched term, were those of a man who knows he’s in a cage, exposed to the jeers of all his old ambitions until he dies.”

“Poetry had always seemed something I could turn to in need – an emergency exit, a lifebuoy, as well as a justification.”

“Death starves us of life. So we learn to fabricate our own immortalities.”

“She’s always looking for poetry and passion and sensitivity, the whole Romantic kitchen. I live on a rather simpler diet.’ ‘Prose and pudding?”I don’t expect attractive men necessarily to have attractive souls.”

“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.”

“Think. In a minute from now you could be saying, I risked death. I threw for life, and I won life. It is a very wonderful feeling. To have survived.”

“Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.”

“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.”

“He stared to sea. “I gave up all ideas of practicing medicine. In spite of what I have just said about the wave and the water, in those years in France I am afraid I lived a selfish life. That is, I offered myself every pleasure. I traveled a great deal. I lost some money dabbling in the theatre, but I made much more dabbling on the Bourse. I gained a great many amusing friends, some of whom are now quite famous. But I was never very happy. I suppose I was fortunate. It took me only five years to discover what some rich people never discover — that we all have a certain capacity for happiness and unhappiness. And that the economic hazards of life do not seriously affect it.”

“I’ve been sitting here and thinking about God. I don’t think I believe in God any more. It is not onlyme, I think of all the millions who must have lived like this in the war. The Anne Franks. And backthrough history. What I feel I know now is that God doesn’t intervene. He lets us suffer. If you pray forliberty then you may get relief just because you pray, or because things happen anyhow which bringyou liberty. But God can’t hear. There’s nothing human like hearing or seeing or pitying or helpingabout him. I mean perhaps God has created the world and the fundamental laws of matter andevolution. But he can’t care about the individuals. He’s planned it so some individuals are happy,some sad, some lucky, some not. Who is sad, who is not, he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t care. So hedoesn’t exist, really.These last few days I’ve felt Godless. I’ve felt cleaner, less muddled, less blind. I still believe in aGod. But he’s so remote, so cold, so mathematical. I see that we have to live as if there is no God.Prayer and worship and singing hymns—all silly and useless.I’m trying to explain why I’m breaking with my principles (about never committing violence). It isstill my principle, but I see you have to break principles sometimes to survive. It’s no good trustingvaguely in your luck, in Providence or God’s being kind to you. You have to act and fight foryourself.The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty.As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or could live in them all. It’sobvious, it stares you in the face. There must be a God and he can’t know anything about us.”

“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 don’t believe in God. And I certainly don’t feel chosen.””I think you may be.”I smiled dubiously. “Thank you.””It is not meant as a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself.”

“There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist.”