I still couldn’t accept that this was not some nightmare, like some freak misbinding in a book, a Lawrence novel become, at the turn of a page, one b… - John Fowles

In a vivid Insight, a flash of black lightning, he [Charles] saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was the great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality — history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies.

You may wonder how I had not seen it before. I believe I had. But to see something is not the same as to acknowledge it.

The princess calls, but there is no one, now, to hear her.