John Fowles: Living

“When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Drawing

“I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Daniel Martin (1977)
Source: The Magus
Context: I saw that I was from now on, for ever, contemptible. I had been and remained, intensely depressed, but I had also been, and always would be, intensely false; in existentialist terms, inauthentic. I knew I would never kill myself, I knew I would always want to go on living with myself, however hollow I became, however diseased.

Disease

“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.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Thinking

“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.'
To live alone?'
To live. With what you are.”

John Fowles book The Magus

Source: The Magus

Suffering , Learning

“It is only when our characters and events begin to disobey us that they begin to live.”

John Fowles book The French Lieutenant's Woman

Source: The French Lieutenant's Woman