John Fowles Quotes

Life has become the ideology of its own absence.

everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death

It even feels absurd to be writing or singing a song at all - in the context of actual death, being alive feels absurd.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

I think it's my job or the artist's job, to try and find some solution or some reason to accept things. But given the grimmest reality, I feel the grimmest facts are the real facts, the true facts: that you're born, you die, you suffer, it's to no purpose, and you're gone forever, ever, ever, and that's it.

Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

What's the point of trying to fix a world we're so briefly in?

We're all making castles in the sand, wonderful tapestries, an exquisite corpse. But is it meaningful? No. It's dogs barking. It doesn't mean anything beyond our yelping, at the pain of being alive.

Life may be not only meaningless but absurd.

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

I don’t know. We’ll all be dead.

Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.

You must realize that one day you will die. Until then you are worthless.

In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.

Life is tragic and absurd, and none of it has any purpose at all.

What's the point of our life? Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.

My search not only failed, but I convinced myself that all those who had searched like myself had failed also, and come like me to the despairing conviction that the only absolute knowledge man can possess is this—that life is without a meaning.

The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.

I searched all areas of knowledge, and not only did I fail to find anything, but I was convinced that all those who had explored as I did had also come up with nothing. Not only had they found nothing, but they had clearly acknowledged the same thing that had brought me to despair: the only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.

It is meaningless that we are born, it is meaningless that we die.

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.

Everything means nothing that is the only truth.