There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
John FowlesRead
All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Writers balance their understanding of reality with their imagination to create compelling narratives.
This quote suggests that novelists must inhabit both the real world, where they draw inspiration from life experiences and observations, and an unreal world, which represents their imagination and creativity. By engaging with both realms, writers can craft stories that resonate deeply with readers while also allowing for the exploration of fantastical elements that engage the imagination.
Themes
NovelistsRealityImaginationWritingStories
In practice
Example use cases
A writing workshop where participants explore this balance.
More from John Fowles
All quotes →I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.
John FowlesRead
Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?
John FowlesRead
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 FowlesRead
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 FowlesRead
It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly.
John FowlesRead
Similar quotes
There are lots of similarities between being a writer and a lawyer: to tell a story to a jury, hold their attention, make them laugh, make them like you. But what makes being a barrister less satisfying than being a writer is, finally, that it's about what someone else wants you to say.
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I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
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In an artist's life, death is perhaps not the most difficult thing.
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I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or hear, fascinates me. I see it for its dramatic potential.
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Let the splendor of diamond, pearl and ruby vanish? Only let this one teardrop, this Taj Mahal, glisten spotlessly bright on the cheek of time, forever and ever.
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With vocal and choral music, first and foremost, it's the text. Not only do I need to serve the text, but the text - when I'm doing it right - acts as the perfect 'blueprint', and all the architecture is there. The poet has done the heavy lifting, so my job is to find the soul of the poem and then somehow translate that into music.
Eric WhitacreRead