I am talking about the general psychological health by John Fowles

I am talking about the general psychological health

John Fowles

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Categorized in : Men Talking Psychological Health

If a person is intelligent, then of course he is either an agnostic or an atheist. Just as he is a physical coward. They are automatic definitions of high intelligence.

coward intelligent atheist

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

paint lines personality

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer. His fairy story.

fairy-stories cancer love-you

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the great... by John Fowles

Duty is but a pot. It holds whatever is put in it, from the greatest evil to the greatest good.

The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narrat... by John Fowles

The great majority of modern third-person narration is "I" narration very thinly disguised.

modern majority crafts

The absurdly neurotic role you and the rest of your kind have always attributed to me Erato, the Goddess Muse of Erotic Poetry bears no relation at all to reality. As a matter of fact, I was trained as a clinical psychologist. Who simply happens to have specialized in the mental illness that you, in your ignorance, call literature.

ignorance writing reality

Whatever sympathy I feel towards religions, whatever admiration for some of their adherents, whatever historical or biological necessity I see in them, whatever metaphorical truth, I cannot accept them as credible explanations of reality; and they are incredible to me in proportion to the degree that they require my belief in positive human attributes and intervenient powers in their divinities.

historical sympathy reality

He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human. by John Fowles

He's not human; he's an empty space disguised as a human.

empty space hatred

Like all mystics (and many novelists, not least the present one) he is baffled, a child, before the real now; far happier out of it, in a narrative past or a prophetic future, locked inside that weird tence grammar does not allow, the imaginary present.

real writing children

Though I like the various forms of football in the world, I don't think they begin to compare with these two great Anglo-Saxon ball games for sophisticated elegance and symbolism. 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. With football we are back to the monotonous clashing armor of the brontosaurus.

baseball beautiful football

If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt h... by John Fowles

If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.

silence hurt might

I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I've become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I'm not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything is normal. It's like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.

singing girl thinking

I will tell you what war is. War is a psychosis caused by an inability to see relationships. Our relationship with our fellowmen. Our relationship with our economic and historical situation. And above all our relationship to nothingness, to death.

psychosis historical war

We can sometimes recognize the looks of a century ago on a modern face; but never those of a century to come.

faces sometimes looks

On the whole, dialogue is the most difficult thing, without any doubt. It's very difficult, unfortunately. You have to detach yourself from the notion of a lifelike quality. You see, actually lifelike, tape-recorded dialogue like this has very little to do with good novel dialogue. It's a matter of getting that awful tyranny of mimesis out of your mind, which is difficult.

doubt mind writing

Evolution did not intend trees to grow singly. Far more than ourselves they are social creatures, and no more natural as isolated specimens than man is as a marooned sailor or hermit.

sailor tree men

There are some men who are consoled by the idea that there are women less attractive than their wives; and others who are haunted by the knowledge that there are more attractive.

The practise of an art is essential to the whole man, not because of what art is but because of what art does to the artist.

essentials men art

How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old? by John Fowles

How can one build a better self unless on the ruins of the old?

The diary will really try and tell people who you are and what you were. The alternative is writing nothing, or creating a totally lifeless, as it is leafless, garden.

creating garden writing