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"He had not the benefit of existentialist terminology; but what he felt was a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom - that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror."
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"It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first encounter in the world beyond the grave of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering in mutual dread, as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost."

"Mesa, adorno de marfil, arcoíris, cebolla, peinado, molusco, Sabbat, violencia, cutícula, melodrama, cuneta, miel, pañuelo... Nada la conmovía. (...) Nada conseguía ser más de lo que era en realidad. Eran solo cosas, prisioneras de su propia esencia."

"That's the existential problem," Fat said, "based on the concept that We are what we do, rather than, We are what we think. It finds its first expression in Goethe's Faust, Part One, where Faust says, 'Im Anfang war das Wort'. He's quoting the opening of the Fourth Gospel; 'In the beginning was the Word.' Faust says, 'Nein. Im Anfang war die Tat.' In the beginning was the Deed. From this, all existentialism comes."

"We exist only to exist."

"About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives. This can be defined as the general neurosis of our times."

"One thing you cannot know: The sudden extinction of every alternative, The unexpected crash of the iron cataract. You do not know what hope is, until you have lost it. You only know what it is not to hope: You do not know what it is to have hope taken from you Or to fling it away, to join the legion of the hopeless Unrecognized by other men, though sometimes by each other."

"It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish."

"People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit-and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea."

"It can't be that life is so senseless and horrible. But if it really has been so horrible and senseless, why must I die and die in agony? There is something wrong!"

"ESTRAGON: Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!VLADIMIR: Did I ever leave you?ESTRAGON: You let me go."
Explore more quotes by John Fowles


"That is the great distinction between the sexes. Men see objects, women see the relationships between objects."


"Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them."


"I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me."


"There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not anymore what you will become. It is what you are and always will be."


"Perhaps twenty minutes later he realized she had gone to sleep. He quietly removed his now stiff arm, then turned away. It must have woken her a little After a moment he felt her turn as well and lay a hand, instinctively, like a sleeping wife, across his hips; as if, in some dream, he was the one who escaped."


"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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