John Fowles Quotes

I’ll never retire as long as I live—that’s like retiring from life! I’ll never stop writing, teaching, lecturing. If you’re in good health, living is exciting on its own.

Stop doing what the record companies are doing and do what's in your heart.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

Art is doing. Art deals directly with life.

If one has fear, there can be no initiative in the creative sense of the word. To have initiative in this sense is to do something original - to do it spontaneously, naturally, without being guided, forced, controlled. It is to do something which you love to do.

You can't ever create defensively. You just have to create the next thing that really speaks to you.

Whatever you do, do it from your heart. It won't happen just by sitting at home.

Never try to copy other writers, and never try to have a formula. It has to come from your heart and soul.

I think, at the end of the day, it comes down to authenticity and creating what you love.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.

It's better to create something that others criticise than to create nothing and criticise others. Go create, have fun!!

If it's not happening, write your own thing!

If I create with my heart almost all my intentions remain. If it is with the head - almost nothing. An artist must not fear to be himself, to express only himself. If he is absolutely and entirely sincere, what he says and does will be acceptable to others.

Make your own fun. As opposed to consume fun like a package of Spam.

While making art you should just do what is in your heart.

You try to be as original as you can be without thinking about statistics. You just go from the soul and from the heart.

Do the stuff that only you can do. The urge, starting out, is to copy. And that's not a bad thing. Most of us only find our own voices after we've sounded like a lot of other people. But the one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you're walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That's the moment you may be starting to get it right.

To be creative you actually have to do something.

It doesn't matter what it is, it doesn't matter if you have training or a background in it. Just create something, and lend a piece of yourself to that art.

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.

Own what you are, and I mean whether that's art, or whether that's fashion, or whether that's music, or whether that's acting, or whether that's politics, or whether that's literature; it's own what you are, and grab it, and, you know, be as prolific as possible.

It needs great art, learning to play with one's own life, to play on one's own life. Meditation is the art to create music from your heart. Meditation is simply the method to transform noise into harmony, the method to shift your consciousness from the head to the heart. The head is noisy, it is all noise - a tale told by an idiot, full of fury and noise, signifying nothing.

People are imitative and imitation is bound to be unintelligent. They want to do exactly the things which others are doing. That destroys their freshness. Do things in your own style; live your life according to your own light. And even if the same situation arises, be alert to find a new response. It is only a question of a little alertness, and once you have started enjoying... and it is really a great joy to respond to old situations always in a new way, because that newness keeps you young, keeps you conscious, keeps you non-mechanical, keeps you alive.