438 Quotes by John Fowles

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.

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.

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.

Как-то он показал мне сосуд. Называется морилка. Усыплятьбабочек. Вот я и сижу в такой морилке. Бьюсь крыльями о стекло. Оттого, чтооно прозрачно, мне кажется, что побег возможен. Что есть надежда. Только этовсего лишь иллюзия.

I say "her," but the pronoun is one of the most terrifying masks man has invented; what came to Charles was not a pronoun, but eyes, looks, the line of the hair over a temple, a nimble step, a sleeping face.

You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it ... fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in flight from the real reality. That is a basic definition of Homo sapiens.

Nice girl, dear boy.""Oh . . ." I shrugged. "You know.""Most attractive.""Cheaper than central heating.""I'm sure.

They pay thousands and thousands for the Van Goghs and Modiglianis they'd have spat on at the time they were painted. Guffawed at. Made coarse jokes about.

It is me. I am his madness. For years he's been looking for something to put his madness into. And he found me.