The Collector

by John Fowles

forgetting’s not something you do, it happens to you.

I felt I would do anything to know her, to please her, to be her friend, to be able to watch her openly, not spy on her.

What Water is to the Body, Purpose is to the Mind.”

“They’re beautiful. But sad.” Everything’s sad if you make it so, I said. “But it’s you who make it so!” She was staring at me across the drawer. “How many butterflies have you killed?” You can see. “No, I can’t. I’m thinking of all the butterflies that would have come from these if you’d let them live. I’m thinking of all the living beauty you’ve ended.”

When you draw something it lives and when you photograph it it dies.”

She was just like a woman. Unpredictable. Smiling one minute and spiteful the next.

Kindle tells me that this is one of the most highlighted passages of the book, and that makes me feel icky about the kinds of people who are reading this book and maybe not getting it.

“You want to lean on me. I can feel it. I expect it’s your mother. You’re looking for your mother.” I don’t believe in all that stuff, I said. “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.”

“He’s the last person I’d marry. I’d rather marry you.” Then why can’t it be me? “Because I can’t marry a man to whom I don’t feel I belong in all ways. My mind must be his, my heart must be his, my body must be his. Just as I must feel he belongs to me.” I belong to you. “But you don’t! Belonging’s two things. One who gives and one who accepts what’s given. You don’t belong to me because I can’t accept you. I can’t give you anything back.” I don’t want much. “I know you don’t. Only the things that I have to give anyway. The way I look and speak and move. But I’m other things. I have other things to give. And I can’t give them to you, because I don’t love you.”

I can’t write in a vacuum like this. To no one. When I draw I always think of someone like G.P. at my shoulder.

I do like to hear you talk. I do think about what you say. M. No, you don’t. You put what I say in your mind and wrap it up and it disappears for ever.

A year ago I would have stuck to the strict moral point. Like Major Barbara. But the essential is that we have money. Not where the money comes from, or why it is sent.)

You must make, always. You must act, if you believe something. Talking about acting is like boasting about pictures you’re going to paint. The most terrible bad form.

felt I was going mad last night, so I wrote and wrote and wrote myself into the other world. To escape in spirit, if not in fact. To prove it still exists.

there’s only the slithery scratch of my pencil on this pad.

Nobody who has not lived in a dungeon could understand how absolute the silence down here is. No noise unless I make it. So I feel near death. Buried. No outside noises to help me be living at all. Often I put on a record. Not to hear music, but to hear something. I have a strange illusion quite often. I think I’ve become deaf. I have to make a little noise to prove I’m not. I clear my throat to show myself that everything’s quite normal. It’s like the little Japanese girl they found in the ruins of Hiroshima. Everything dead; and she was singing to her doll.

He said, men are vile. I said, the vilest thing about them is that they can say that with a smile on their faces.

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you. They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.

He can’t take it. The only thing that kept him decent before was being poor. Being stuck to one place and one job.

There’s no word to say how he said it. Sadly, almost unwillingly. Tenderly, but a shade bitterly. And honestly. Not teasing, not being dry. But right out of his real self. I’d been looking down all the time we were talking, but he made me look up then, and our eyes met and I know something passed between us. I could feel it. Almost a physical touch. Changing us.

He’s not human; he’s an empty space disguised as a human.

This is the worst possible time in history to die. Space-travel, science, the whole world waking up and stretching itself. A new age is beginning. I know it’s dangerous. But it’s wonderful to be alive in it.

uncreative men plus opportunity-to-create equals evil men.

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.

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

The power of women! I’ve never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke. We’re so weak physically, so helpless with things. Still, even today. But we’re stronger than they are. We can stand their cruelty. They can’t stand ours.

If there is a God he’s a great loathsome spider in the darkness.

Oh God oh God do not let me die. God do not let me die. Do not let me die.