Fowles. The Collector. Quotes

Sept. 13, 2014, 1:53 p.m.
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  • Forgetting's not something you do, it happens to you.

  • When you don't have money, you always think things will be very different after.

  • The public like a smile or a small joke once in a while.

  • That's the thing about money. There are no obstacles.

  • What Water is to the Body, Purpose is to the Mind.

  • Excuse me, do you know anything about dogs?

  • It's old-fashioned to say you love a woman.

  • You shouldn't ever tell a woman you loved her. Even if you did. If you had to say 'I love you,' you said it joking — he said that way it kept them after you. You had to play hard to get.

  • It’s the way people speak that gives them away, not what they say.

  • Anyway, I couldn’t respect anyone, and especially a man, who did things just to please me. I’d want him to do them because he believed they were right.

  • Let bygones be bygones.

  • It’s not money you go by.

  • Everything’s sad if you make it so.

  • I’m not egocentric enough. I’m a woman. I have to lean on something.

  • We’d never be any good together. We both want to lean.

  • It is a sign of madness to want everything clean.

  • We all want things we can’t have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.

  • I don’t see the point of wasting money on something you don’t believe in.

  • Why do you take all the life out of life?

  • Forced promises are no promises.

  • If you give a girl jewellery, you must put it on yourself.

  • I've got lots of friends. Do you know why? Because I'm never ashamed of them.

  • I don't think of good or bad. Just of beautiful or ugly. I think a lot of nice things are ugly and a lot of nasty things are beautiful.

  • Easy does it.

  • There are times when every man is attractive.

  • We've been naked in front of each other. We can't be farther apart.

  • You draw a line and you know at once whether it's a good or a bad line. But you write a line and it seems true and then you read it again later.

  • You can't smash human ugliness.

  • The way people talk and talk about tachism and cubism and this ism and that ism and all the long words they use – great smeary clots of words and phrases. All to hide the fact that either you can paint or you can’t.

  • The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe – so long as it's something more than belief in your own comfort.

  • If you are a real artist, you give your whole being to your art. Anything short of that, then you're not an artist.

  • You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you're going to paint.

  • If you feel something deeply, you're not ashamed to show your feeling.

  • However good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.

  • I won, so I must forgive.

  • Lust it simple. You reach an understanding of once. You both want to get into bed or one of you doesn’t.

  • The women I've loved have always told me I'm selfish. It's what makes them love me. And then be disgusted with me.

  • Sometimes losing is winning.

  • Men are vile. The vilest thing about them is that they can say that with a smile on their faces.

  • The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything. But if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever end ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness.

  • Two people in a desert, trying to find both themselves and an oasis where they can live together.

  • Bodies beat minds.

  • Why should every vital and creative and good person be martyred by the great universal stodge around?

  • I hate all ordinary dull little people who aren't ashamed of being dull and little.

  • The New People are still the poor people. Theirs is the new form of poverty. The others hadn't any money and these haven't any soul.

  • Sometimes it is frightening, thinking of the struggle life is if one takes it seriously.

  • Why should people have money if they don't know how to use it?

  • Honest poor are the moneyless vulgar rich.

  • The one perfume you really want is freedom.

  • She doesn't believe in any other world but the one he lives in and sees. He's the one in prison.

  • An ash tree a foot high is still an ash tree.

  • To shout at someone suggests that there's still contact.

  • We have to live as if there is no God.

  • You have to break principles sometimes to survive. It's no good trusting vaguely in your luck, in Providence or God's being kind to you. You have to act and fight for yourself.

  • Uncreative man plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men.

  • The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.

  • Sex doesn't matter. Love does.

  • We can't be further apart. We’ve been naked in front of each other.

  • They sulk if you don't give, and hate you when you do. Intelligent men must despise themselves for being like that.

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