The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love. by John Fowles

The dead live." "How do they live?" "By love.

John Fowles

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The most important questions in life can never be answered by any... by John Fowles

The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.

important philosophy life

We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is a... by John Fowles

We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

decent accepting want

One of the great fallacies of our time is that the Nazis rose to power because they imposed order on chaos. Precisely the opposite is true - they were successful because they imposed chaos on order. They tore up the commandments, they denied the super-ego, what you will. They said, "You may persecute the minority, you may kill, you may torture, you may couple and breed without love." They offered humanity all its great temptations. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

couple time love

The profoundest distances are never geographical. by John Fowles

The profoundest distances are never geographical.

distance

There are only two races on this planet - the intelligent and the... by John Fowles

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

intelligent stupid silly

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

love men war

Time is not a road - it is a room. by John Fowles

Time is not a road - it is a room.

time rooms

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive. by John Fowles

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.

alive way

The noblest relationship is marriage, that is, love. Its nobility resides in its altruism, the desire to serve another beyond all the pleasures of the relationship; and in its refusal ever to regard the other as a thing, an object, a utilizability. Sex is an exchange of pleasures, of needs; love is a giving without return. It is this giving without return, this helping without reward, this surplus of pure good, that identifies the uniqueness of man as well as the true nature of the true marriage. This is the quintessence the great alchemy of sex is for.

love men sex

There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.

acceptance philosophy life

But I think the most harmful change brought about by Victorian science in our attitude to nature lies in the demand that our relation with it must be purposive, industrious, always seeking greater knowledge.

nature attitude lying

Another reason I think the novel will survive is that the reader has to work in a novel. In a film, you are presented with someone else's imagination exactly bodied out. The marvelous thing about a novel is that every reader will imagine even the very simplest sentence slightly differently.

empathy imagination thinking

There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.

novelists writing needs

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.

nature tree moving

The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.' 'I suppose one could say that Hitler didn't betray his self.' He turned. 'You are right. He did not. But millions of Germans did betray their selves. That was the tragedy.'

race self men

I am infinitely strange to myself. by John Fowles

I am infinitely strange to myself.

strange

People knew less of each other, perhaps, but they felt more free of each other, and so were more individual. The entire world was not for them only a push or a switch away. Strangers were strange, and sometimes with an exciting, beautiful strangeness. It may be better for humanity that we should communicate more and more.

space beautiful thinking

I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

insects mercy thinking

I read and I read; and I was like a medieval king, I had fallen in love with the picture long before I saw the reality.

kings long reality

Medieval theologians used to dispute how the angels in the heaven spent their time, when not balancing on needle points and singing anthems to the Lord. I know. They slump glued to their clouds, glasses at the ready, as the Archangel Micheal (that well-known slasher) and stonewalling St Peter open against the Devils XI. It could not be Heaven, otherwise.

glasses angel clouds