John Fowles Quotes

People always ask me, 'I don't know how you could watch that, how that affects you,' and I just tell them, 'I went through it in real life, so it's like pilots watching a 'Top Gun' movie or cyclists watching a bicycle movie,' something like that.

I guess I'm curious about how people process grief and how they process loss. And I'm also interested in the ways in which an event can have long-reaching consequences and a life over the course of years.

I'm pretty mad at horror films for ruining my childhood.

I'm against bullying, I hate it because I've dealt with it.

I was just a kid then. But I won't forget. Nor will others. There's lots of people with reason to hate the Church.

The honest truth is that it was just traumatizing with the piano, with the authority of the piano teacher, getting rapped across the knuckles, and so whenever you put a piece of music in front of me, there's a Pavlovian reaction where it starts off.

Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.

I would just go in my room and just scream out of anger because I didn't understand how a person could be so vicious and mean.

When you're in a depressed state, having something really bad happen gives you kind of a life again.

When people say of their tragedies, 'I don't often think of it now,' what they mean is it has entered permanently into their thoughts, and colors everything.

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going.

When I grew up in Ireland in the seventies there was no such thing as therapy...I mean we didn't even have cappuccinos until 1998! So for me music was therapy, it was also the place where one could speak about himself, where he was allowed to speak about his traumatic experiences.

Already Roland feels his limbs starting to go numb. He swallows hard. "I hate this. I hate you. I hate all of you." "I understand.

It'd be better if he were easier to hate.

I don't read my reviews. Unless I'm unfortunate enough to catch something by accident, which happens, and it's always a bad review. Always, it's amazing. I will be sitting in a café, and I will open a random paper right to the page of the review.... And then you're sucked in and go home and never want to go out again.

In every mind where there is a strong tendency to fear there is a strong capacity to hate. Those who dwell in fear dwell nest door to hate; and I think it is the cowardice of women which makes them such intense haters.

After 9/11, I was like many people in New York City and got a little depressed. I began to check myself into The Waldorf Astoria for room service, movies and just to chill. I wanted to contribute to the great city of Manhattan.

Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy

Criticism will plant FEAR in the human heart, or resentment, but it will not build love or affection.

When fear displaces reason, the result is often irrational hatred and division.

When we hate someone we make them more powerfull than they are.

The word resentment means to re-feel...to feel again. Someone wrongs or wounds you; in resenting it, you re-feel the injury. And you re-hurt yourself. The Hebrew Talmud says that a person who bears a grudge is "Like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand."

Throughout the ordeal, I learned that getting mad was easier than being sad. Anger was something I could control. I could settle into an easy rhythm of blame and hate. Focus my energy on something than the ache in my heart.

Love makes everything lovely; hate concentrates itself on the one thing hated.