The Collector

by John Fowles

“We’d never be any good together. We both want to lean.” You could lean on me financially, I said. “And you on me for everything else? God forbid.”

“I always seem to end up by talking down to you. I hate it. It’s you. You always squirm one step lower than I can go.”

I said, now it’s your turn to tell a fairy story. He just said, I love you.

don’t want to die. I feel full of endurance. I shall always want to survive. I will survive.

I know I can’t do things like love by halves, I know I have love pent up in me, I shall throw myself away, lose my heart and my body and my mind and soul to some cad like G.P. Who’ll betray me. I feel it. Everything is tender and rational at first in my daydreams of living with him, but I know it wouldn’t be in fact. It would be all passion and violence. Jealousy. Despair. Sour. Something would be killed in me. He would be hurt, too.

His promiscuity is creative. Vital. Even though it hurts. He creates love and life and excitement around him; he lives, the people he loves remember him.