John Fowles Quotes

Not hear it? --yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long --long --long --many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it --yet I dared not --oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! --I dared not --I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb!

When she is alone in the rooms I hear her humming to keep herself from thinking.

Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence.

At the time, nobody knew what it was. It had no name. When everything else is out of your control, you can control your eating. You end up cutting a lot of things off. Nothing reaches you. I was very happy then - that was the oddity.

I went through real darkness, but the ring was my light. That was the one place I felt safe. I could control what happened in the ring. My heart turned icy.

As a child, I would go days without speaking, and then suddenly I would scream until everyone was looking at me.

There are a series of emotions that most survivors go through after disclosing. It starts with feeling great, like the weight on your shoulders has been lifted, and then you're alone with your thoughts, like, 'Why did I do that?' And then, what about the person who gets backlash?

Depression is real, and that really hit me hard. I was going through a phase where I wasn't talking to no one. Only my son. Me and my son would do stuff, but I was talking to no one.

Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, and terrified.

Colour is the touch of the eye, Music to the deaf, A word out of darkness.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

What am I always going to do? I'm going to go home and freak out.I'm going to sit with my family and try not to talk about myself and what's wrong. Im going to try and eat. Then I'm going to try and sleep. I dread it. I can't eat and I can't sleep. I'm not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?

How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all.

...If there's a noise in the woods, and there's nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise?" "Of course it is," she replied calmly. "How did you reach that conclusion?" Beldin demanded. "Because there's no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around --wild animals, mice, insects, birds --and they can all hear." "But what if there weren't? What if the woods are truly empty?" "Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?

Language. I loved it. And for a long time I would think of myself, of my whole body, as an ear.

When we hide from the world in this way, we feel secure. We may think we have quieted our fear, but we are actually making ourselves numb with fear. We surround ourselves with our own familiar thoughts, so that nothing sharp or painful can touch us.

Most people can’t stomach silence; it provides too much opportunity to think about things they prefer to avoid.

I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me.

One must have a mind of winter to regard the frost and the boughs of the pine trees, crusted with snow, And have been cold a long time, to behold the junipers, shagged with ice, the spruces, rough in the distant glitter of the January sun, and not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind, in the sound of a few leaves, which is the sound of the land, full of the same wind, blowing in the same bare place for the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing herself, beholds nothing that is not there, and the nothing that is.

I think about Old Nick carrying me into the truck, I'm dizzy like I'm going to fall down. "Scared is what you're feeling," says Ma, "but brave is what you're doing." "Huh?" "Scaredybrave." "Scave." Word sandwiches always make her laugh but I wasn't being funny.

In times of horror and torment prayer is a great thing Nobody answers But at least it stops you from thinking.

Sleep is still difficult I sleep for three or four hours a day. Usually sometime in the afternoon. I walk in the cold, keep myself numb. I cry less, and less." (James Frey, pg.88)

Sometimes a man doesn’t know what to do about things and sometimes it’s best to lie very still and try not to think at all about anything.

I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless...

My singing silenced the bullies, but better than that, it silenced the demons inside me. When you're jeered at, told to shut up, sit still, stop being silly, there's a cacophony of noise rolling around in your head. When I was singing, it was peaceful.