Elizabeth Bowen Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• 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

• Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Giving, Want, Darling

  6 Copy quote

• [A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Trying, Levels, Should

  6 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

• Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Mixtures, Language, Statements

  10 Copy quote

• Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, Growing Up, Book

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Mulberry Tree”, p.49, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to have loud chords struck on them.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Girl, Luxury, Knowing

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

  7 Copy quote

• I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author-detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower's pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl's lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Art, Children, Air

  8 Copy quote

• She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Girl, Expression, Photograph

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

  11 Copy quote

• When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Dog, Children, Moving

  Elizabeth Bowen (1998). “Bowen's Court”

  4 Copy quote

• Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Fate, Destiny, Eagles

  The House in Paris pt. 2, ch. 2 (1935)

  22 Copy quote

• Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Art, Hurt, Memorable

  Heat of the Day (1949) ch. 16

  10 Copy quote

• What I have found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Somewhere Else, Now And Then, Should

  7 Copy quote

• Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave a little-even if one did once know what one meant

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Paper, Littles

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Death Of The Heart”, p.7, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Someone soon to start on a journey is always a little holy.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Travel, Journey, Littles

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

  8 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

• Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Ideas, Roots, May

  7 Copy quote

• The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Eye, Writing, Adults

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

  13 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

• Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Fiction, Crafts

  8 Copy quote

• That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Fiction, Hub

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

  7 Copy quote

• All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Dialogue, Deals

  5 Copy quote

• I do like Italian graves; they look so much more lived in.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Italian, Looks, Graves

  Elizabeth Bowen, Maud Ellman (2012). “The Hotel: A Novel”, p.99, University of Chicago Press

  5 Copy quote

• To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  People, History, Walks

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

  7 Copy quote

Page 3 of 9

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin