The Magus

by John Fowles

No writer will happily disclose the deeper biographical influences of his work, which are seldom those of outward date and occupation, and I am no exception.

Away from its inhabited corner Spetsai was truly haunted, though by subtler – and more beautiful – ghosts than those I have created. Its pine-forest silences were uncanny, unlike those I have experienced anywhere else; like an eternally blank page waiting for a note or a word. They gave the most curious sense of timelessness and of incipient myth. In no place was it less likely that something would happen; yet somehow happening lay always poised.

‘My dear, you must often be frightened,’ Said a friend to Madame de Sade. ‘Oh not exactly frightened, But just a little bit scarred.’