"The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself"
About this Quote
Fowles is pushing back against the modern appetite for outsourced meaning: self-help gurus, institutions, lovers, even art itself as a substitute conscience. “The most important questions” sounds comforting until the trapdoor opens: he’s not praising rugged individualism so much as insisting on the loneliness of ethical choice. The line carries a quiet menace. If no one else can answer for you, no one else can absolve you, either.
As a novelist shaped by postwar disillusionment and existentialist currents, Fowles had reason to distrust inherited scripts. His fiction repeatedly stages the seduction of authority - the teacher, the collector, the omniscient narrator - only to reveal how easily people volunteer for captivity when a ready-made answer is offered. This sentence is the antidote: it denies you the alibi of consensus. It also denies you the fantasy that someone “who knows” is coming to tidy up your confusion.
The craft here is in the absolute phrasing. “Can never” slams the door on negotiations, and “except oneself” makes the reader the sole witness, jury, and defendant. The subtext is less “be yourself” than “you are responsible for the story you tell yourself.” Love, faith, vocation, morality - these aren’t multiple-choice tests; they’re lived commitments that only become legible through action. Fowles isn’t romanticizing solitude. He’s describing the price of freedom: you don’t get to borrow an answer and still call it yours.
As a novelist shaped by postwar disillusionment and existentialist currents, Fowles had reason to distrust inherited scripts. His fiction repeatedly stages the seduction of authority - the teacher, the collector, the omniscient narrator - only to reveal how easily people volunteer for captivity when a ready-made answer is offered. This sentence is the antidote: it denies you the alibi of consensus. It also denies you the fantasy that someone “who knows” is coming to tidy up your confusion.
The craft here is in the absolute phrasing. “Can never” slams the door on negotiations, and “except oneself” makes the reader the sole witness, jury, and defendant. The subtext is less “be yourself” than “you are responsible for the story you tell yourself.” Love, faith, vocation, morality - these aren’t multiple-choice tests; they’re lived commitments that only become legible through action. Fowles isn’t romanticizing solitude. He’s describing the price of freedom: you don’t get to borrow an answer and still call it yours.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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