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5cff4f8
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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.
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war
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John Fowles |
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9abb717
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Wolves don't hunt singly, but always in pairs. The lone wolf was a myth.
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John Fowles |
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356e60a
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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.
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satisfaction
unsatisfaction
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John Fowles |
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bc5626d
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The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.
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John Fowles |
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b4e7139
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You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges li..
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writing
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John Fowles |
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f214dc3
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There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be. You are too young to know this. You are still becoming. Not being.
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self-acceptance
being
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John Fowles |
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8b2655a
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I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.
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collector
fowles
john
resentment
selfishness
shame
weapons
fight
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John Fowles |
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96e5b97
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They looked down on her; and she looked up through them.
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John Fowles |
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5e8dc4f
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Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
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John Fowles |
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d2396d7
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I mean I never feel I feel what I ought to feel.
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John Fowles |
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82fba7e
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Yet this distance, all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio, television, cheap travel and the rest, was not wholly bad. People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communica..
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John Fowles |
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68178d6
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The world began in hazard and will end in it.
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John Fowles |
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ab49b88
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Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
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passion
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John Fowles |
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f2eadc1
|
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's obvious, it stares you in the fact. There be a God and he know anything about us.
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John Fowles |
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7b36da6
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One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing ..
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John Fowles |
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7e5399f
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We lay on the ground and kissed. Perhaps you smile. That we only lay on the ground and kissed. You young people can lend your bodies now, play with them, give them as we could not. But remember that you have paid a price: that of a world rich in mystery and delicate emotion. 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 yoursel..
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John Fowles |
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56505e3
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all cynicism masks a failure to cope.
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John Fowles |
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ba8e6d0
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cras amet qui numquam amavit quique amavit cras amet.
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John Fowles |
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a421e81
|
The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
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John Fowles |
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55c8796
|
You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts.
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John Fowles |
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1f14a1c
|
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, therefore I am sad.
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John Fowles |
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7c17d39
|
He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.
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John Fowles |
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0263e9e
|
I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.
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hiroshima
normality
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John Fowles |
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96c5fc8
|
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.
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John Fowles |
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d5cf7c5
|
there are times when silence is a poem.
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silence
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John Fowles |
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80f8cee
|
The best wines take the longest to mature.
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John Fowles |
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5917385
|
The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.
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women-s-strength
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John Fowles |
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104e3f6
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I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.
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John Fowles |
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1a429c9
|
If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.
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intelligence
coward
atheist
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John Fowles |
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98bf3d0
|
Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.
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John Fowles |
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4a398d7
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You're not me. You can't feel like I feel." "I can feel." "No you can't. You just choose not to feel or something and everything's fine." "It's not fine. It's just not so bad."
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John Fowles |
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6b62e09
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Sometimes I almost pity them. I think I have a freedom they cannot understand. No insult, no blame can touch me. Because I have set myself beyond the pale. I am nothing, I am hardly human any more. I am the French Lieutenant's Whore.
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whore
pity
pride
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John Fowles |
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8e27c78
|
I'm only happy when I forget to exist. When just my eyes or my ears or my skin exist.
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reading
movies
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John Fowles |
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697d33f
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That's the trouble with provincial life. Everyone knows everyone and there is no mystery. No romance.
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John Fowles |
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42b547b
|
8. You hate the political buisness of nationality. You hate everything, in politics and art and everything else, that is not genuine and deep and necessary. You don't have time for silly trivial things. You live seriously. You don't go to silly films, even if you want to; you don't read cheap newspapers; you don't listen to trash on the wireless and the telly; you don't waste time talking about nothing. You your life.
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life
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John Fowles |
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88da65a
|
Ask me to marry you." "Will you marry me?" "No."
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John Fowles |
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b8c76f6
|
For him the tragedy of Homo sapiens is that the least fit to survive breed the most.
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tragedy
homo-sapiens
darwin
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John Fowles |
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bc97e9a
|
It's rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. It's what distinguishes all great art from the other kind.
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John Fowles |
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919ba26
|
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.
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time
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John Fowles |
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29798de
|
But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.
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personality
creativity
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John Fowles |
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8ba0711
|
We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come.
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John Fowles |
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d746cbc
|
What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.
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love
selfish
selfishness
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John Fowles |
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db166cd
|
It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.
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youthful-arrogance
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John Fowles |
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34ebf94
|
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. It's the only thing I look forward to. This afternoon I read what I wrote... And it seemed vivid. I know it seems vivid because my imagination fills in all the bits another person wouldn't understand. I mean, it's vanity. But it seems a sort of magic... And I just can't live in this present. I would go mad if I did
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John Fowles |