Quotes From "The Collector" By John Fowles

Look, Miranda, he said, those twenty long years that lie between you and me. I've more knowledge of life than you, I've lived more and betrayed more and seen more betrayed. At your age one is bursting with ideals. You think that because I can sometimes see what's trivial and what's important in art that I ought to be more virtuous. But I don't want to be virtuous. My charm (if there is any) for you is simply frankness. And experience. Not goodness. I'm not a good man. Perhaps morally I'm younger even than you are. Can you understand that? . John Fowles

I just think of things as beautiful or not. Can't you understand? I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful. John Fowles

I am one in a row of specimens. It's when I try to flutter out of line that he hates me. I'm meant to be dead, pinned, always the same, always beautiful. He knows that part of my beauty is being alive. but it's the dead me he wants. He wants me living-but-dead. John Fowles

The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face. John Fowles

You despise the real bourgeois classes for all their snobbishness and their snobbish voices and ways. You do, don't you? Yet all you put in their place is a horrid little refusal to have nasty thoughts or do nasty things or be nasty in any way. Do you know that every great thing in the story of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?. John Fowles

Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart. John Fowles

Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that? John Fowles

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

I hate people who collect things and classify things and give them names and then forget all about them. That’s what people are always doing in art. They call a painter an impressionist or a cubist or something and then they put him in a drawer and don’t see him as a living individual painter any more. John Fowles

This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn't necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing. All in vain. All wasted. The older the world becomes, the more obvious it is. The bomb and the tortures in Algeria and the starving babies in the Congo. It gets bigger and darker. More and more suffering for more and more. And more and more in vain. John Fowles

Fictional people are people, too, otherwise why would we care what happens to them? Nora Roberts

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. John Fowles

I love honesty and freedom and giving. I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart. John Fowles

Creative is my god. Technology my cherished lover. Nora Roberts

He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands. John Fowles

Dante.Oh, Dante.Seal me! Seal me so hard! ”. He grabs my hips andpumps his toward mine.“ Oh, Dante! You’re so hot when you seal souls.” I shove my idiot-of-a-best-friend off me and laugh.“ What the hell was that?” I ask.“ My new move. Victoria Scott

Do you truly feel that she is worth your wings?” He smiled. “What good are my wings, friend, when I can hold theworld in my arms? Elizabeth Morgan

Why did you choose to save me?”“ I could not let you die.” He placed the plate and glass on the kitchen counter.“ But you have let goodness knows how many people die. Why me?”“ You made me...” He leaned against the counter and looked at her. “You made me…feel. Elizabeth Morgan

He moved closer to her. “You did not have to get me anything. The fact that you did means I have been in your thoughts. I am thankful for that. Elizabeth Morgan

A seal the size of Canada attaches to her soul light. Victoria Scott

I nod and smile and smile and nod, and when she turns away, I form a gun with my hand, place it to my temple, and pull the trigger. This girl is starved for attention. It's amazing to me when people are totally unaware of how bad they are at socializing. Victoria Scott

If there is a God he's a great loathsome spider in the darkness. John Fowles

People won't admit it, they're too busy grabbing to see that the lights have fused. They can't see the darkness and the spider-face beyond and the great web of it all. That there's always this if you scratch at the surface of happiness and goodness. The black and the black and the black. John Fowles

You’re beautiful. If you believe it, they’ll believe it. Victoria Scott

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me. John Fowles

Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you. John Fowles

I hate beyond hate. John Fowles

I could scream abuse at him all day long; he wouldn't mind at all. It's me he wants, my look, my outside; not my emotions or my mind or my soul or even my body. Not anything human. John Fowles

But let me tell ya, spend every day living only for yourself, every day indulging in little sins that aren’t that big of a deal, and one day I may be showing you the ropes in hell. Amen. Victoria Scott

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. John Fowles

It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. . John Fowles

People who teach you cram old ideas, old views, old ways, into you. Like covering plants with layer after layer of old earth; it's no wonder the poor things so rarely come up fresh and green. John Fowles

M. I’ve never really thought of M objectively before, as another person. She’s always been my mother I’ve hated or been ashamed of. Yet of all the lame ducks I’ve met or heard of, she’s the lamest. I’ve never given her enough sympathy. I haven’t given her this last year (since I left home) one half of the consideration I’ve given the beastly creature upstairs just this last week. I feel that I could overwhelm her with love now. Because I haven’t felt so sorry for her for years. I’ve always excused myself– I’ve said, I’m kind and tolerant with everyone else, she’s the one person I can’t be like that with, and there has to be an exception to the general rule. So it doesn’t matter. But of course that’s wrong. She’s the last person that should be an exception to the general rule. Minny and I have so often despised D for putting up with her. We ought to go down onour knees to him. John Fowles

He said, it's rather like your voice. You put up with your voice and speak with it because you haven't any choice. But it's what you say that counts. It's what distinguishes all great art from the other kind. John Fowles

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment. John Fowles

We girls are prewired to like things that make you suffer. Victoria Scott

I wonder if Blue knows she’s repainting her room. I wonder if he’s asking if she wants a ride to the party tonight. I wonder if he knows what being strangled feels like. Victoria Scott

Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don't care. John Fowles

Someone should have warned me about love's dark underbelly, about the rejection and despair. Victoria Scott

What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me. John Fowles

Some people would say- you're only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn't matter. But all the evil in the world's made up of little drops. It's silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing. John Fowles

No. No way. That name is reserved for females with grace and elegance, not this girl. This girl is...beastly. Victoria Scott

Sure you do. Everyone wants to play. They’re just afraid of looking stupid. But you know what’s stupid? Not trying. So just…try. Victoria Scott