The Collector (Vintage Classics)

by John Fowles

I’m trying to explain why I’m breaking with my principles (about never committing violence). It is still my principle, but I see you have to break principles sometimes to survive.

The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty.

I sit down here in the absolute silence with my reflection, in a sort of state of mystery.

I am a moral person. I am not ashamed of being moral. I will not let Caliban make me immoral; even though he deserves all my hatred and bitterness and an axe in his head.

You can’t talk about it with him because the word ‘art’ starts off a whole series of shocked, guilty ideas in him.

does it really bore them (so that they don’t need it at all in their lives) or does it secretly shock and dismay them, so that they have to pretend to be bored?

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

he has that hate of other things and other people outside his own type. He has that selfishness

It’s a battle between Caliban and myself. He is the New People and I am the Few.

People who don’t make anything. I hate them.

Look up caliban fred is not a maker, an unmaker? miranda as opposite to fred

some cad like G.P. Who’ll betray me. I feel it.

passion and violence.

I’ve got the whole weight of the whole earth pressing in on this little box. It grows smaller smaller smaller.

love is something that comes in different clothes, with a different way and different face, and perhaps it takes a long time for you to accept it, to be able to call it love.

I’ve always tried to happen to life; but it’s time I let life happen to me.

Deep down in him, side by side with the beastliness, the sourness, there is a tremendous innocence. It rules him. He must protect

said I pitied him and he flew at me. It was terrible. It made me cry. The terrible coldness, the inhumanity of it. Being his prisoner. Having to stay. Still. And realizing at last that this is what he is.

And it’s this weird male thing. Now I’m no longer nice. They sulk if you don’t give, and hate you when you do.

The pity Shakespeare feels for his Caliban, I feel (beneath the hate and disgust) for my Caliban. Half-creatures.

Prospero’s contempt for him. His knowing that being kind is useless.

I used to think it was messy. But love is beautiful, any love. Even just

I could never cure him. Because I’m his disease.

All this is wild talk.

Today. I know I’m going to escape. I feel it.

I shall still know that the person I was and would have stayed if this hadn’t happened was not the person I now want to be.

This pain, this terrible seeing-through that is in me now. It wasn’t necessary. It is all pain, and it buys nothing. Gives birth to nothing.

couldn’t face the idea of not knowing how she was, of not being able to see her whenever I wanted. I was just like in love with her all over again.

Thinking about my rotten life and her life, and everything else.

I couldn’t do anything, I wanted her to live so, and I couldn’t risk getting help,

she lingered on all the morning and afternoon and went with the sun.

I know she was breathing about half past three when I went downstairs to do a bit of dusting and so on to take my mind off things, and when I came back about four, she was gone.

and God rest her soul, not that I believe in religion, but it seemed right.

I thought how happy I was, feelings I had those weeks I never had before and I wouldn’t ever have again.

then I thought it was her fault, she asked for everything she got.

I kept remembering how people in Lewes seemed to look at me sometimes, like the people in that doctor’s waiting-room. They all knew I was mad.

It kept on coming back, this feeling that she was lucky to be done with it all, no more worries, no more hiding, no more things you want to be and won’t ever be.

That’s why I never believed in God. I think we are just insects, we live a bit and then die and that’s the lot. There’s no mercy in things. There’s not even a Great Beyond. There’s nothing.

As it so happens, anyway, as soon as I woke up I began to have more sensible ideas,

These ideas came while I was having breakfast, not deliberate, they just came.

As I say, it would be possible (if I hadn’t learnt my lesson).

I ought to have got someone who would respect me more. Someone ordinary I could teach.

I have not made up my mind about Marian (another M! I heard the supervisor call her name), this time it won’t be love, it would just be for the interest of the thing and to compare them and also the other thing, which as I say I would like to go into in more detail and I could teach her how.