To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. — John Fowles Copy Share Image
The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
He felt himself in suspension between the two worlds, the warm, neat civilization behind his back, the cool, dark mystery outside. We… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“A word (...) is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction; and whatever (...) body that destination finally acquires… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. — John Fowles Copy Share Image
The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
It's no good. I've been trying to sleep for the last half-hour, and I can't. Writing here is a sort of drug.… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“Write, if you must, because you feel like writing, never because you feel you ought to write.” — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“She was trying to write a novel, it was so slow, you had to destroy so much and start again; so hard… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“The truth about any artist, however terrible, is better than the silence.... I know many writers fight fanatically to keep their published… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
We all write poems; it is simply that the poets are the ones who write in words — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“After you finish (writing a book) you are intensely depressed. It doesn’t much matter whether the reviews are good or not. You… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty. As if the architects and builders would live in all the houses they built! Or… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.” — John Fowles Copy Share Image
Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want. — John Fowles Copy Share Image
That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects. — John Fowles Copy Share Image
The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night? — John Fowles Copy Share Image
There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. — John Fowles Copy Share Image
“Long afterwards I realized why some men, racing drivers and their like, become addicted to speed. There are those of us who never see… — John Fowles Copy Share Image
But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating. — John Fowles Copy Share Image