John Fowles, The Collector Quotes

Alive. Alive in the way that death is alive.

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

Art's cruel. You can get away with murder with words. But a picture is like a window straight through to your inmost heart.

But however good you get at translating personality into line or paint it's no go if your personality isn't worth translating.

Piers is always going on about how he hated Stowe. As if that solves everything, as if to hate something means it can't have affected you.

I must fight with my weapons. Not his. Not selfishness and brutality and shame and resentment.

The power of women! I've never felt so full of mysterious power. Men are a joke.

I love honesty and freedom and giving. 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.

He said, one has to learn that painting well - in the academic and technical sense - comes right at the bottom of the list. I mean, you've got that ability. So have thousands.

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

I hate beyond hate.

Everything free and decent in life is being locked away in filthy little cellars by beastly people who don't care.

What you love is your own love. It's not love, it's selfishness. It's not me you think of, but what you feel about me.