John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the stupid.

— John Fowles

“The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe - so long as it's something more than belief…

— John Fowles

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

— John Fowles

The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is…

— John Fowles

“Each pleasure we feel is a pleasure less; each day a stroke on a calendar. What we will not accept is that…

— John Fowles

“Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the one thing that stops women laughing…

— John Fowles

I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before…

— John Fowles

“He said, men are vile. I said, the vilest thing about them is that they can say that with a smile on…

— John Fowles

“You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it,…

— John Fowles

People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire…

— John Fowles

Always we try to put the wild in a cage.

— John Fowles

“Utram bibis?Aquam an undam?”

— John Fowles

No amount of reading and intelligent deduction could supplant the direct experience.

— John Fowles

Each age, each guilty age, builds high walls around its Versailles; and personally I hate those walls most when they are made…

— John Fowles

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

“But the one perfume you really want is freedom.”

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

The American myth is of free will in its simple, primary sense. One can choose oneself and will oneself; and this absurdly…

— John Fowles

People knew less of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or…

— John Fowles

I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful…

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

“It's like living in the Arabian Nights. Being the favourite in the harem. But the one perfume you really want is freedom.”

— John Fowles

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the…

— John Fowles