|
a9ed30c
|
I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't feel chosen." "I think you may be." I smiled dubiously. "Thank you." "It is not meant as a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself."
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
e4f2a75
|
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.
|
|
hazards
fortune
luck
|
John Fowles |
|
152da02
|
the freedom that allows other freedons to exist
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
a273c7d
|
I think he was a little like the lizard that changes color with its surroundings. He appeared far more a gentleman in a gentleman's house. In that inn, I saw him for what he was. And I knew his color there was far more natural than the other.
|
|
surroundings
gentleman
lizard
|
John Fowles |
|
79f1f84
|
Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not g..
|
|
virtue
good
goodness
life
betrayed
bursting
younger
older
trivial
ideals
virtuous
years
frank
old
frankness
betray
important
understand
ideal
experience
charm
knowledge
betrayal
young
|
John Fowles |
|
ea73fdd
|
People won't admit it, they're too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They can't see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That there's always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness. The black and the black and the black.
|
|
happy
good
dark
people
goodness
darkness
happiness
fused
grab
grabbing
scratch
spider
lights
beyond
web
distraction
see
black
surface
distracted
|
John Fowles |
|
9bcf4e2
|
As if I'd lit a fire in the darkness to try and warm us. And all I'd done was to see his real face by it.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
1c7323d
|
As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
95e4c4e
|
To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape. And my feelings, at the end of that wretched term, were those of a man who knows he's in a cage, exposed to the jeers of all his old ambitions until he dies.
|
|
poetry
|
John Fowles |
|
8bba5f1
|
I knew that on that island one was driven back into the past. There was so much space, so much silence, so few meetings that one too easily saw out of the present, and then the past seemed ten times closer than it was.
|
|
solitude
nature
past
|
John Fowles |
|
dbd289e
|
It was an unforgettable painting; it set a dense golden halo of light round the most trivial of moments, so that the moment, and all such moments, could never be completely trivial again.
|
|
life
moments
painting
capture
|
John Fowles |
|
4ddb6b1
|
Girls possess sexual tact in inverse proportion to their standard of education.
|
|
women-sexuality
|
John Fowles |
|
e557b52
|
She argued. She cried. She took my faltering, my tortured refusals for something far finer than they really were. At the end of the afternoon, before we left the wood, and with a solemnity and sincerity, a complete dedication of herself that I cannot describe to you because such unconditional promising is another extinct mystery...she said, Whatever happens I shall never marry anyone but you.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
240523c
|
It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world.
|
|
violence
humanity
pacifism
|
John Fowles |
|
9865899
|
I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be worth paying if the article promised to be really enjoyable, but which nine times out of ten became rapidly excessive.
|
|
sex
|
John Fowles |
|
2897393
|
He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands.
|
|
artists
painting
skill
creativity
|
John Fowles |
|
8189808
|
Sarah turned on her, and shook her head. "You may keep them. And if it is possible with so small a sum of money, I suggest you purchase some instrument of torture. I am sure Mrs. Fairly will be pleased to help you use it upon all those wretched enough to come under your power."
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
6360527
|
I am Mrs. Poulteney. I have come to take up residence. Kindly inform your Master." "His Infinitude has been informed of your decease, ma'am. His angels have already sung a Jubilate in celebration of the event." "That is most proper and kind of Him." And the worthy lady, pluming and swelling, made to sweep into the imposing white hall she saw beyond the butler's head. But the man did not move aside. Instead, he rather impertinently jangled s..
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
08b13a1
|
The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to break, a tower to fall; unedurable in its emotion, its truth bursting to be spoken.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
c1359fe
|
She smiled at him as they waited for their dessert, her chin poised on her clasped hands. 'You're being very silent.' 'That's how men cry.
|
|
silence
men
john-fowles
silent
cry
|
John Fowles |
|
a4f17aa
|
Ideeea ca ne plac oamenii este o iluzie pe care trebuie s-o pastram in noi daca vrem sa traim in societate. Dar eu am expulzat-o de mult, cel putin cat traiesc aici. Tu vrei sa fii iubit? Eu ma multumesc pur si simplu sa "fiu", sa exist. Poate intr-o zi ai sa inteegi si tu ce inseamana asta. Si ai sa zambesti. Un zambet aprobator, un zambet sarcastic."
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
6e0a07e
|
Urasc oamenii de stiinta care colectioneaza lucruri si le clasifica si le dau nume,ca apoi sa uite cu totul de ele.La fel se intampla si in arta.Eticheteaza un pictor drept impresionist sau cubist sau altceva si il pun intr-un anume sertar si nu se mai gandesc la ca la o fiinta umana care picteaza
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
4165d80
|
Knowledge of my atrocious selfishness, settled on me. All those bitter home truths she had flung at me, right from the beginning...and still loved me; was so blind that she still loved me. One day she had said: (and she had not meant "make love to me") and I took it as chicanery, another emotional blackmail, to make me feel essential and so give me a sense of responsibility towards her."
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
4e21ba1
|
I mean most women just want to be good at something, they've got good-at minds, and they mean deftness and a flair and good taste and what-not. They can't ever understand that if your desire is to go to the furthest limits of yourself then the actual form your art takes doesn't seem important to you. Whether you use words or paint or sounds.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
c3e8727
|
Just those three words, said and meant.I love you.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
cb1d3b8
|
People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; it's no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
0805e7b
|
I've been sitting here and thinking about God. I don't think I believe in God any more. It is not only me, I think of all the millions who must have lived like this in the war. The Anne Franks. And back through history. What I feel I know now is that God doesn't intervene. He lets us suffer. If you pray for liberty then you may get relief just because you pray, or because things happen anyhow which bring you liberty. But God can't hear. The..
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
0b579c5
|
The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face.
|
|
future
beauty
past
sadness
music
heart
moon
everywhere
intense
ourselves
ever
feeling
deep
silver
ending
end
christ
sad
|
John Fowles |
|
a1835b0
|
Which are you drinking? The water or the wave?
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
faf577b
|
An answer is always a form of death.
|
|
death
end
|
John Fowles |
|
9f5f62a
|
He's a collector. That's the great dead thing in him.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
a025f51
|
Victims?
|
|
|
John Fowles The Magus |
|
8efcf19
|
Staring out to sea, I finally forced myself to stop thinking of her as someone still somewhere, if only in memory, still obscurely alive, breathing, doing, moving, but as a shovelful of ashes already scattered; as a broken link, a biological dead end, an eternal withdrawal from reality, a once complex object that now dwindled, dwindled, left nothing behind except a l like a fallen speck of soot on a blank sheet of paper.
|
|
memories
death-of-a-loved-one
|
John Fowles |
|
40b32fd
|
Che cos'e l'Ottocento? Un'epoca nella quale la donna era sacra, e si poteva comprare una ragazza di tredici anni per poche sterline, o pochi scellini se la si voleva soltanto per un'ora o due. Nella quale si costruirono piu chiese che in tutta la precedente storia del paese, e a Londra una casa su sessanta era un bordello (la proporzione moderne sarebbe pressappoco una su seimila). Nella quale la santita del matrimonio (e della castita prem..
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
df4cdcb
|
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 |
|
8f47f48
|
She died." I had to prompt him. "Soon after?" "In the early hours of February the nineteenth, 1916." I tried to see the expression on his face, but it was too dark. "There was a typhoid epidemic. She was working in a hospital." "Poor girl." "All past. All under the sea." "You make it seem present." "I do not wish to make you sad." "The scent of lilac." "Old man's sentiment. Forgive me." There was a silence between us. He was staring into th..
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
81417b0
|
This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing. All in vain. All wasted. The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker. More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain.
|
|
pain
suffering
dark
world
birthing
older
starving
vain
nothing
necessary
bomb
obvious
terrible
wasted
waste
torture
|
John Fowles |
|
20a7885
|
I know I can't do things like love by halves, I know I have love pent up in me, I shall throw myself away, lose my heart and my body and my mind and soul to some cad like G.P. Who'll betray me. I feel it.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
85be867
|
If it makes you happier - I'm free.' The rain came in sudden great swathes across the tree-tops and hit the windows and the roof; like spring rain, out of season. The bedroom air seemed full of unspoken words, unformulated guilts, a vicious silence, like the moments before a bridge collapses. We lay side by side, untouching, effigies on a bed turned tomb; sickeningly afraid to say what we really thought. In the end she spoke, in a voice tha..
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
0c00418
|
But forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you. Only it didn't happen to me
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
9820e12
|
She was trying to write a novel, it was so slow, you had to destroy so much and start again; so hard to discover whether one was really a writer or just a victim of a literary home environment.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
d40f2fd
|
Under this swarm of waspish self-inquiries he began to feel sorry for himself - a brilliant man trapped, a Byron tamed; and his mind wandered back to Sarah, to visual images, attempts to recollect that face, that mouth, that generous mouth. Undoubtedly it awoke some memory in him, too tenuous, perhaps too general, to trace to any source in his past; but it unsettled him and haunted him, by calling to some hidden self he hardly knew existed...
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
13c059f
|
It makes me sick,the blindness, deadness, out-of-dateness, stodginess and, yes, sheer jealous malice of the great bulk of England.
|
|
|
John Fowles |
|
4adee09
|
He said it as if 'very rich' was a nationality; as perhaps it is.
|
|
|
John Fowles |