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.

— John Fowles

John Fowles Quotes

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.

— John Fowles

It was too exactly as imagined to be true. But I felt as gladly and expectantly disorientated, as happily and alertly alone, as Alice in Wonderland.

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.

— John Fowles

If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today.

— John Fowles

I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failure to cope – an impotence, in short; and that to despise all effort is the greatest effort of all.

— John Fowles

Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.

— John Fowles

The world began in hazard and will end in it.

— John Fowles

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies.

— John Fowles

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time.

— John Fowles

I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships.

— John Fowles

Hazard has conditioned us to live in hazard. All our pleasures are dependant upon it. Even though I arrange for a pleasure; and look forward to it, my eventual enjoyment of it is still a matter of hazard. Wherever time passes, there is hazard. You may die before you turn the next page.

— John Fowles

The newspapers are full of what we would like to happen to us and what we hope will never happen to us.

— John Fowles

Edith Sitwell’s interest in art was largely confined to portraits of herself.

— John Fowles

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.

— John Fowles

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.

— 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.

— John Fowles

Only fools think our attitude to our fellow men is a thing distinct from our attitude to ‘lesser’ life on this planet.

— John Fowles

Between skin and skin, there is only light.

— John Fowles

Thomas Beecham was a pompous little band-master who stood against everything creative in the art of his time.

— John Fowles
More John Fowles Quote >>
Privacy Policy   8.10ms  0.70MB