In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that… - John Fowles

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In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was a 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.
- The French Lieutenant's Woman

John Fowles

English

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About John Fowles

John Robert Fowles (31 March 1926 – 5 November 2005) was an English novelist and essayist.

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Alternative Names: John Robert Fowles

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Margaret Atwood Jean-Paul Sartre Iris Murdoch Saul Bellow Ursula K. Le Guin

Additional quotes by John Fowles

They're beautiful. But sad.'
Everything's sad if you make it so, I said.

Each pleasure we feel is a pleasure less; each day a stroke on a calendar. What we will not accept is that the joy in the day and the passing of the day are inseparable. What makes our existence worthwhile is precisely that its worth and its while - its quality and duration - are as impossible to unravel as time and space in mathematics of relativity.

Some people would say- you're only a drop, your word-breaking is only a drop, it wouldn't matter. But all the evil in the world's made up of little drops. It's silly talking about the unimportance of the little drops. The little drops and the ocean are the same thing.

In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but ho… - John Fowles

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