John Fowles Quotes

I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

Although sometimes the morbid is also the transcendent, the transcendent cannot be reduced to the morbid.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

The world's a mean place. It's unfair, then it's fair. It's hateful, then it's loving. It's a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.

We have to believe in free will. We’ve got no choice.

I feel like humans, when you're faced with decisions, you can go up and down: duality.

In one breath, I can say that we are God, but in another I have to say that we aren't deities.

If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper? ?To be? is to inter-be. We cannot just be by ourselves alone. We have to inter-be with every other thing. This sheet of paper is, because everything else is.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

Form and formless are intertwined in this world. The formless can only be expressed in form and form can only be thought with the formless.

The old saying of the two kinds of truth. To the one kind belongs statements so simple and clear that the opposite assertion obviously could not be defended. The other kind, the so-called 'deep truths', are statements in which the opposite also contains deep truth.

I am everything and I am nothing. I am just kidding; I am not everything and nothing. That would be ridiculous. I am just everything.

As does every young man studying philosophy, I naturally asked myself questions about the truth of all this, and about the meaning of freedom, predestination, and liberty of choice and so on. But to have asked questions of yourself about it, I think is not too important. Let's say - I remain - I remained a believer.

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

They don't have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too.

People ask me if I believe in things: in God, in astrology, and I say, absolutely! I believe in everything! And I believe in its opposite. Like the positive and negative volts on a battery, you need both for power.

Bhuta ia, dewa ia. (Bali expression meaning Man is a demon, man is a god.)

Undecidability is a useful category even in dealing with restaurant menus.

Neither way is better. / Both ways are necessary. / It is also necessary / To make a choice between them.

For me, it's always easy to choose between the Ultimate, the Infinite, and the Chocolate.

Every time I see the bumper sticker that says “We think we’re humans having spiritual experiences, but we’re really spirits having human experiences,” I (a) think it’s true and (b) want to ram the car.

Life is agid, life is fulgid. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time.

Either it is the fold of the infinite, or the constant folds [replis] of finitude which curve the outside and constitute the inside.

Which path do you intend to take, Nell?' said the Constable, sounding very interested. 'Conformity or rebellion?' Neither one. Both ways are simple-minded - they are only for people who cannot cope with contradiction and ambiguity.

So much good, so much evil. Just add water.