438 Quotes by John Fowles

I would have gone to bed with him that night. If he had asked. If he had come and kissed me. Not for his sake, but for being alive's.

I'm not really sorry. But I'm not absolutely unsorry.

I needed a new mystery.

Liking other people is an illusion we have to cherish in ourselves if we are to live in society.

It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and although I couldn't have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery.

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

He was one of the most supremely stupid men I have ever met. He taught me a great deal.

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.

Why should I struggle through hundreds of pages of fabrication to reach half a dozen very little truths?''For fun?''Fun!' He pounced on the word. 'Words are for truth. For facts. Not fiction.