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

The horrid old man Sinbad had to carry on his back. That’s what you are. You get on the back of everything vital, everything trying to be honest and free, and you bear it down.

— John Fowles

It was certainly not a beautiful face, by any period’s standard or taste. But it was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. There was no artifice there, no hypocrisy, no hysteria, no mask; and above all, no sign of madness. The madness was in the empty sea, the empty horizon, the lack of reason for such sorrow; as if the spring was natural in itself, but unnatural in welling from a desert.

— John Fowles

Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it, I still think I can escape.

— John Fowles

The fear I felt was the same old fear; not of the appearance, but of the reason behind the appearance. It was not the mask I was afraid of, because in our century we are too inured by science fiction and too sure of science reality ever to be terrified of the supernatural again; but of what lay behind the mask. The eternal source of all fear, all horror, all real evil, man himself.

— John Fowles

The rebel with no specific gift for rebellion is destined to become the drone; and even this metaphor is inexact, since the drone has at least a small chance of fecundating the queen, whereas the human rebel-drone is deprived even of that small chance and may finally see himself as totally sterile, lacking not only the brilliant life-success of the queens but even the humble satisfactions of the workers in the human hive. Such.

— John Fowles

There are at least sixteen other Holy Members in Europe. Mostly from mummies, and all equally discredited. But for de Deukans it was simply a collectable, and the religious or indeed human blasphemy it represented had no significance for him. This is true of all collecting. It extinguishes the moral instinct. The object finally possesses the possessor.

— John Fowles

Here at the frontier, there are falling leaves. Although my neighbors are all barbarians, and you, you are a thousand miles away, there are always two cups on my table.

— John Fowles

Besides, in such wells of loneliness is not any coming together closer to humanity than perversity?

— John Fowles

Sometimes people say “Good riddance!” in so many words.

— John Fowles

Charles called himself a Darwinist, and yet he had not really understood Darwin. But then, nor had Darwin himself.

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

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.

— John Fowles

We could not expect him to see what we are only just beginning – and with so much more knowledge and the lessons of existentialist philosophy at our disposal – to realise ourselves: that the desire to hold and the desire to enjoy are mutually destructive. 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, and therefore am sad.

— John Fowles

It was simple: one lived by irony and sentiment, one observed convention. What might have been was one more subject for detached and ironic observation; as was what might be. One surrendered, in other words; one learnt to be what one was.

— John Fowles

Nothing is real. All is fiction. Somewhere there’s someone writing us, we’re not real. He or she decides who we are, what we do, all about us.

— John Fowles

Always I liked in them the things they didn’t want to be liked for.

— John Fowles

I suppose it’s why I hate Australia and I love Australia and I couldn’t ever be happy there and yet I’m always feeling homesick. Does that make sense?

— John Fowles

I don’t want to hurt you and the more I... want you, the more I shall. And I don’t want you to hurt me and the more you don’t want me the more you will.

— John Fowles

I know what it’s like when people go away. It’s agony for a week, then painful for a week, then you begin to forget, and then it seems as if it never happened, it happened to someone else, and you start shrugging. You say, dingo it’s life, that’s the way things are. Stupid things like that. As if you haven’t really lost something forever.

— John Fowles

Obscurer, but no less strong, was the feeling that she loved me more than I loved her, and that consequently I had in some indefinable way won.

— John Fowles
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