John Fowles
John Robert Fowles was an English novelist and essayist who also worked as a teacher and screenwriter during his lifetime.
Born on March 31, 1926, in Leigh-on-Sea, Fowles was educated at Alleyn Court Preparatory School and Bedford School before going on to study at New College. He wrote in English throughout his career, producing fiction associated with the postmodernist genre. He received the WH Smith Literary Award in recognition of his work.
Three novels are among his notable works: The Collector, The Magus, and The French Lieutenant's Woman. His output also extended beyond the novel form, taking in essays and screenwriting, which reflects the range of his engagement with writing across different modes and formats. He held United Kingdom citizenship throughout his life.
Fowles died on November 5, 2005, in Lyme Regis, at the age of seventy-nine. His work sits within postmodernist fiction, a genre that questions the conventions of storytelling and the reliability of narrative voice. The three novels most closely attached to his name — The Collector, The Magus, and The French Lieutenant's Woman — represent the core of his career as a novelist writing in that form.
Quotes by John Fowles
John Fowles's insights on:
A lack of sexuality so total that her smart clothes and too heavy make-up made her pathetic; like an unsuccessful geisha.
Our stereotyping societies force us to feel more alone. They stamp masks on us and isolate out real selves. We all live in two worlds: the old comfortable man-centred world of absolutes and the harsh real world of relatives. The latter, the relativity reality, terrifies us; and isolates and dwarfs us all.
Baseball and cricket are beautiful and highly stylized medieval war substitutes, chess made flesh, a mixture of proud chivalry and base in both senses greed.
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.
One writes things and the implications shriek- it’s like suddenly realizing one’s deaf.
As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can’t have affected you.