John Fowles

I’m so superior to him. I know this sounds wickedly conceited. But I am. And so it’s Ladymont and Boadicaea and noblesse oblige all over again. I feel I’ve got to show him how decent human beings live and behave.

I want to paint like Berthe Morisot, I don’t mean with her colours or forms or anything physical, but with her simplicity and light. I don’t want to be clever or great or “significant” or given all that clumsy masculine analysis. I want to paint sunlight on children’s faces, or flowers in a hedge or a street after April rain.
The essences. Not the things themselves.

But we do it to keep our self-respect to show to ourselves, each one to himself or herself, that we care. And to let other people, all the lazy, sulky, hopeless ones like you, know that someone cares. We’re trying to shame you into thinking about it, about acting.

The only thing that really matters is feeling and living what you believe—so long as it’s something more than belief in your own comfort.

I know why he likes the photographing business. He thinks it makes me think he’s artistic. And of course he hasn’t a clue. I mean he gets me in focus, and that’s all.

way, and G.P. saying I’ve never hurt an animal in my life, you can always make out a case for hurting human beings, but human animals deserve every sympathy.

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. But the thing I look for isn’t here. It just isn’t here.

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

He came and stood beside me and picked out one of the new abstracts I’d done at home. You’re saying something here about Nicholson or Pasmore. Not about yourself. You’re using a camera. Just as trompe-l’oeil is mischannelled photography, so is painting in someone else’s style. You’re photographing here. That’s all.

The two of us in that room. No past, no future. All intense deep that-time-only. A feeling that everything must end, the music, ourselves, the moon, everything.