John Fowles

Withdrawn, uneducated and unloved, Frederick collects butterflies and takes photographs. A chance pools win enables him to capture the art student Miranda and keep her in the cellar of the Sussex house he has bought with the windfall. The situation is seen first from the collectors point of view: he thinks the chloroform pad no more vicious than his butterfly net, and patiently waits for the barriers of class and taste that inhibit their love to break down in the limbo of their isolation. She, the creator, desperate for her freedom, tries to be understanding but cannot banish her comtempt for everything anti-life that the collector stands for.

The Collector

sharkie

Amanda Autumn Berrey

We are sure that there is some quite harmless explanation for her disappearance. Artistic young people have their whims.”

“You know what you do? You know how rain takes the colour out of everything? That’s what you do to the English language. You blur it every time you open your mouth.”

nadine 

“What I fear in you is something you don't know is in you.”

“We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.”  

“People today always want to get things, they no sooner think of it they want to get it in their hands, but I am different, old-fashioned, I enjoy thinking about the future and letting things develop all in good time.”

“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. Swimmings of light on the smallest things. Or am I being sentimental?”

“Moon-music, so silvery, so far, so noble. 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. That if you get to the heart of things you find sadness for ever and ever, everywhere; but a beautiful silver sadness, like a Christ face. Accepting the sadness. Knowing that to pretend it was all gay was treachery. Treachery to everyone sad at that moment, everyone ever sad, treachery to such music, such truth.”

“It's no good trusting vaguely in your luck, in Providence or God's being kind to you. You have to act and fight for yourself. The sky is absolutely empty. Beautifully pure and empty.”

“I don't want to die. I feel full of endurance. I shall 

The Collector quotes

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