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

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

I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.

— John Fowles

I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't feel chosen."" I think you may be." I smiled dubiously. "Thank you."" It is not meant as a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself.

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

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.

— John Fowles

If I could only escape, if I could only escape... he murmured the words to himself a dozen times; then metaphorically shook himself for being so impractical, so romantic, so duties.

— John Fowles

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

— John Fowles

I had always believed, and not only out of cynicism, that a man and a woman could tell in the first ten minutes whether they wanted to go to bed together; and that the time that passed after those first ten minutes represented a tax, which might be worth paying if the article promised to be really enjoyable, but which nine times out of ten became rapidly excessive.

— John Fowles

I hate beyond hate.

— John Fowles