John Fowles

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

"But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating."

"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."

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

"“When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies.”"

"“Once upon a time there was a young prince who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domains, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father. But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore. Are those real islands' asked the young prince. Of course they are real islands,' said the man in evening dress. And those strange and troubling creatures'They are all genuine and authentic princesses.'Then God must exist!' cried the prince. I am God,' replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow. The young prince returned home as quickly as he could. So you are back,' said the father, the king. I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved. Neither real islands, nor real princesses, I have seen God,' said the prince reproachfully. The king was unmoved. Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God exist.'I saw them!'Tell me how God was dressed.'God was in full evening dress.'Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back'The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived.'At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress. My father the king has told me who you are,' said the young prince indignantly. 'You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician.'The man on the shore smiled. It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father's spell, so you cannot see them.'The prince pensively returned home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes. Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician'The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves. Yes, my son, I am only a magician.'Then the man on the shore was God.'The man on the shore was another magician.'I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic.'There is no truth beyond magic,' said the king. The prince was full of sadness. He said, 'I will kill myself.'The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses. Very well,' he said. 'I can bear it.'You see, my son,' said the king, 'you too now begin to be a magician.”"

"We all write poems it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words."

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

"In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me."

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

"In essence the renaissance is simply the green end of one of civilization's hardest winters."

"I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry."

"But she finally had the good sense to see that a long, dull and predictable future was an expensive price to pay for the satisfaction of a passing sexual attraction."

"I left a pause. ‘You sound like a certain kind of surgeon. A lot more interested in the operation than the patient.’ ‘I should not like to be in the hands of a surgeon who did not take that view."

"Each death laid a dreadful charge of complicity on the living; each death was incongenerous, its guilt irreducible, its sadness immortal; a bracelet of bright hair about the bone."

"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"

"...and his eyes had that splendid innocence, that opaque blue candour of the satanically fallen. ~ The French Lieutenant’s Woman"

"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, women see relationships 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 absurd. I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships."

"A word (...) is never the destination, merely a signpost in its general direction; and whatever (...) body that destination finally acquires owes quite as much to the reader as to the writer."

"Nine-tenths of all artistic creation derives its basic energy from the engine of repression and sublimation, and well beyond the strict Freudian definition of those terms. John Fowles attended new College in Oxford. You might like to see my collection of Oxford trees at Rob's Bookshop."