Ray Pantle > Ray's Quotes

“Greece is like a mirror. It makes you suffer. Then you learn.'
To live alone?'
To live. With what you are.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“You wish to be liked. I wish simply to be. One day you will know what that means, perhaps. And you will smile. Not against me. But with me.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate you for ever for today.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“It came to me…that I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“There is no plan. All is hazard. And the only thing that will preserve us is ourselves.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“The bowed head, the buried face. She is silent, she will never speak, never forgive, never reach a hand, never leave this frozen present tense. All waits, suspended. Suspended the autumn trees, the autumn sky, anonymous people. A blackbird, poor fool, sings out of season from the willows by the lake. A flight of pigeons over the houses; fragments of freedom, hazard, an anagram made flesh. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“The world began in hazard and will end in it.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“Wealth is a monster. It takes a month to learn to control it financially. And many years to learn to control it psychologically.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“I don't believe in God. And I certainly don't feel chosen."

"I think you may be."

I smiled dubiously. "Thank you."

"It is not meant as a compliment. Hazard makes you elect. You cannot elect yourself.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“Her stare fixed me. Without rancour and without regret; without triumph and without evil; as Desdemona once looked back on Venice.

On the incomprehension, the baffled rage of Venice. I had taken myself to be in some way the traitor Iago punished, in an unwritten sixth act. Chained in hell. But I was also Venice; the state left behind; the thing journeyed from.”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“Maurice once said to me- when I had asked him a question rather like yours - he said, "An answer is always a form of death" There was something else in her face then. It was not implaceable; but in some way impermeable. 'I think questions are a form of life”
― John Fowles, The Magus

“Books are like mirrors: if a fool looks in, you cannot expect a genius to look out.”
― J.K. Rowling

“I, myself, am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.”
― Augusten Burroughs

“Accidents ambush the unsuspecting, often violently, just like love.”
― Andrew Davidson, The Gargoyle

“Not everyone can feel things as deeply as you. Most people, their feelings are ... bland, tasteless. They'll never understand what it's like to read a poem and feel almost like they're flying, or to see a bleeding fish and feel grief that shatters their heart. It's not a weakness, Grey. It's what I love about you most.”
― Juliann Garey, Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See

“We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“He prefers the security of known misery to the misery of unfamiliar insecurity.”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

“You can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. (105)”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

“It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

“All of the truly important battles are waged within the self. (7)”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him! The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients

“What if insanity is just a heightened sense of perception?”
― Ania Ahlborn, The Bird Eater