Elizabeth Bowen Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

• 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

• 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

• we can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Growing Up, Anger, Tree

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

  15 Copy quote

• The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Effort, Burning, Individual

  Elizabeth Bowen (1959). “Stories”

  11 Copy quote

• Certain books come to meet me, as do people.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Book, Reading, People

  16 Copy quote

• Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Subjects

  5 Copy quote

• The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Irrelevance, Criticism, Faults

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

  13 Copy quote

• Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Break Up, Heart, Adequate

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

  12 Copy quote

• The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Lying, Two, Literature

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

  10 Copy quote

• Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Interesting, Understanding, Experience

  Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 1, ch. 1

  10 Copy quote

• Spoilt pleasure is a sad, unseemly thing; you can only bury it.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Pleasure, Spoilt

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

  14 Copy quote

• Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Found

  13 Copy quote

• The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Country, Nature, Silence

  "The Death Of The Heart".

  7 Copy quote

• Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Knowing, Purpose, May

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  6 Copy quote

• Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Silence, Speak, Climax

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

  72 Copy quote

• Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Writing, Mistress

  13 Copy quote

• without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Book, Blow, Wind

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  5 Copy quote

• My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal relation to society. My books are my relation to society.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  Elizabeth Bowen, Allan Hepburn (2010). “Listening in: Broadcasts, Speeches, and Interviews by Elizabeth Bowen”, p.3, Edinburgh University Press

  8 Copy quote

• Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Morning, Time, Spring

  Death of the Heart (1938) pt. 2, ch. 1

  18 Copy quote

• Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  People, Solitary

  Elizabeth Bowen, Jack Lane, Brendan Clifford (1999). “"Notes on Eire": espionage reports to Winston Churchill, 1940-2”

  7 Copy quote

• Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Thoughtful, Thinking

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.58, Random House

  6 Copy quote

• Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Women, Literature, Intimacy

  "The Death of the Heart". Book by Elizabeth Bowen, 1938.

  16 Copy quote

• Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Lying, Doors, Locks

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

  10 Copy quote

• No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Eye, Vision, Mysterious

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

  12 Copy quote

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