John Fowles Quotes

Attempts to tame the wayward and domesticate the riotous, to make the unknowable predictable and enchain the free-roaming - all such things sound the death knell to love.

A man is the prisoner of his power.

I'm like a caged animal sometimes. Let me yearn to breathe free.

A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage.

You drew a bird that was here, a kind of sweet chanticleer. But with a terrible fear that the cage couldn't tame

My cage has many rooms.

We do all like to get things inside a barb-wire corral. Especially our fellow-men. We love to round them up inside the barb-wire enclosure of FREEDOM, and make 'em work. Work, you free jewel, WORK! shouts the liberator, cracking his whip.

There can be many bars, wires that keep a person trapped. All of them don't have to have been created for the purpose of harming or caging the bird, but they still serve that function.

A bird on a tether, no matter how long the rope, can always be pulled back.

If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so very carefully shut?

You can't put this possum in a cage

Why do men carry guns and build prison camps, when the nurturing earth is made for freedom?

You can't cage an eagle for long without destroying it.

Of what use were wings to a man fast bound in chains of iron?

A forest bird never wants a cage.

During the period of house arrest, I had an electronic manacle around my leg for 24 hours a day, and for someone who has tried to give others liberty all their adult life, that is absolutely intolerable.

They weren't crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that.

It's difficult to put into words what freedom feels like. You only know what freedom feels like if you know what it feels like to not be free.

Birds born in cages think that flying is a disease.

When I am free to train and free to move, I feel like a gorilla in the jungle. Then, when there are a bunch of media obligations, I feel like I have been captured and am being kept on display.

Little islands are all large prisons: one cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

You might as well expect rivers to run backwards as any man born free to be contented penned up.

People can be slave-ships in shoes.

Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.

Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.