John Fowles Quotes

I hit a brick wall one day, and I spent a lot of time by myself learning about me and who I am and what I want and don't want.

Now you see how you are, the wisdom mixed in with all the scars.

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

I try to say something about the human condition whenever I can when I'm lucky.

The starting point of discovering who you are, your gifts, your talents, your dreams, is being comfortable with yourself. Spend time alone. Write in a journal. Take long walks in the woods.

It took living alone for me to really get to know myself.

Know yourself and go in swinging, if it hurts when you hit, it might be real, too.

There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve, then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tiny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us.

Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

There was Layla in the fullness of her lips, Lulu in the thick waves of her hair, Lu Xin in the intensity of her hazel eyes, Lucia in their twinkle. She was not alone. Maybe she never would be alone again. There, in the mirror, was every incarnation of Lucinda staring back at her and wondering, "What is to become of us? What about our history, and our love?

Certain springs are tapped only when we are alone. Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves; that firm strand which will be the indispensable center of a whole web of human relationships.

When the traveler goes alone he gets acquainted with himself.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

It's not always easy to identify your own voice. It comes with time.

Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

You never find yourself until you face the truth.

Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.

There's a part of me that looks beyond everything now.

Maybe one day I can have a reunion with myself.

I realized that I had to be honest about where I was, where I was coming from, and what I was trying to do.

I have written only what I have thought through, felt through and suffered through.

I had friends but I was spending a great deal of my time alone and for me that was vital because there's an awful lot you learn about yourself when you're alone.