Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

Quotes about:

• When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Love, Relationship, Crush

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

  58 Copy quote

• Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, People, Personality

  37 Copy quote

• In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Real, Real Life, Novel

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  5 Copy quote

• Silences can be as different as sounds.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Silence, Sound, Different

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  14 Copy quote

• Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Life, Success, Truth

  House in Paris (1935) pt. 1, ch. 5

  8 Copy quote

• Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Clever, Stupid, Party

  4 Copy quote

• We are minor in everything but our passions.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Passion, Literature, Minors

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

  31 Copy quote

• life is a succession of readjustments.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Change, Life Is, Succession

  7 Copy quote

• one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Trouble, Should, Difficulty

  8 Copy quote

• It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Friendship, Inspiration, Pockets

  21 Copy quote

• If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Life, Positive Attitude, Diversity

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

  11 Copy quote

• But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Littles, Waste, Firsts

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The House In Paris”, p.214, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him--a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured--captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Reality, May

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.102, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Degrees, Literature, Shapes

  Elizabeth Bowen (1975). “Pictures and conversations”, Lane, Allen

  9 Copy quote

• I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Thinking, Literature, Shows

  10 Copy quote

• Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Men, Choices, Luck

  Elizabeth Bowen (1975). “Pictures and conversations”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  14 Copy quote

• Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Art, Feelings, Literature

  Elizabeth Bowen (1938). “The death of the heart”, Viking Pr

  15 Copy quote

• The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Mean, Law, Narrative

  Elizabeth Bowen (1959). “Stories”

  5 Copy quote

• memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Memories, Cups

  ELIZABETH BOWEN (1935). “The House in Paris”

  8 Copy quote

• Proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own objects; is this not also true of fear?

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Inspirational, Courage, Empowerment

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  9 Copy quote

• Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Half, Firsts

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  7 Copy quote

• The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Doe, Add, Novel

  5 Copy quote

• Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Literature, Outcomes, Language

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  12 Copy quote

• Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Character, Mean

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  7 Copy quote

• somehow at parties at which one stays standing up one seems to require to be more concentratedly intelligent than one does at those at which one can sit down.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Party, Intelligent, Doe

  17 Copy quote

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