Quotes by John Fowles

About John Fowles:

John Robert Fowles was an English novelist of international stature, critically positioned between modernism and postmodernism. His work reflects the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, among others.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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 us...

John Fowles

Men see objects, women see the relationship between objects. Whether the objects need each other, love each other, match each other. It is an extra dimension of feeling we men are without and one that makes war abhorrent to all real women - and abusr...

John Fowles

It is not the state of war that isolates. It is well known, it brings people together. But in the battlefield -- that is something different. Because that is when the real enemy, death, appears. I no longer saw any warmth in numbers. I saw only Thana...

John Fowles

The evolution of human mentality has put us all in vitro now, behind the glass wall of our own ingenuity.

John Fowles

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me.

John Fowles

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

John Fowles

That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects.

John Fowles

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

John Fowles

Content is a word unknown to life; it is also a word unknown to man.

John Fowles

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

John Fowles

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

John Fowles

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

John Fowles

Most marriages recognize this paradox: Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want.

John Fowles

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.

John Fowles

Our accepting what we are must always inhibit our being what we ought to be.

John Fowles

In essence the Renaissance was simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters.

John Fowles

Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because they imagine it is the only thing that stops women laughing at them. In it they can reduce women to the status of objects. That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, ...

John Fowles

Death is not in the nature of things; it is the nature of things. But what dies is the form. The matter is immortal.

John Fowles

The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.

John Fowles

We talked for hours. He talked and I listened. It was like wind and sunlight. It blew all the cobwebs away.

John Fowles

and like most people who have spent much of their adult life being emotionally dishonest, I overcalculated the sympathy a final being honest would bring

John Fowles

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Fowles
  • DescriptionBritish writer
  • BornMarch 31, 1926
  • DiedNovember 5, 2005
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist; Teacher
  • WorksThe Collector; The Magus; The French Lieutenant's Woman