All novelists should live in two different worlds: a real one and an unreal one.
John FowlesRead
We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Accepting what we cannot have is a part of being a good person.
This quote by John Fowles reflects on the universal human experience of desiring things that are unattainable. It emphasizes the importance of acceptance and maturity in dealing with our desires, suggesting that true decency lies in recognizing our limitations and coming to terms with them rather than succumbing to frustration or envy.
Themes
AcceptanceDesiresHumanityLimitationsDecency
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a motivational speech about acceptance and personal growth.
More from John Fowles
All quotes →There are many reasons why novelists write, but they all have one thing in common - a need to create an alternative world.
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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.
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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?
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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
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