Elizabeth Bowen Quotes - Page 8

Quotes about:

• Exhibitionism and a nervous wish for concealment, for anonymity, thus battle inside the buyer of any piece of clothing.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Clothes, Wish, Battle

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  7 Copy quote

• At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Garden, Games, Childhood

  4 Copy quote

• The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Heart, Thinking, People

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Death Of The Heart”, p.163, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• Almost everybody wore a curious limpidity of expression, like newborn babies or souls just after death. Dazed but curiously dignified.... after a criseof hysterical revulsion and tiredness, I passed beyondand became entered by a rather sublime feeling.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Baby, Peace, War

  4 Copy quote

• I pity people who do not care for Society. They are poorer for the oblation they do not make.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  People, Care, Pity

  Elizabeth Bowen (1942). “Seven winters”

  4 Copy quote

• Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Passion, May, Habit

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “The Heat Of The Day”, p.99, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Unique, Ideas, People

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

  7 Copy quote

• Autumn arrives in the early morning.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Morning, Fall, Autumn

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

  13 Copy quote

• A Bowen, in the first place, made Bowen's Court. Since then, with a rather alarming sureness, Bowen's Court has made all the succeeding Bowens.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Home, Firsts, Succeed

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

  4 Copy quote

• The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Literature, Firsts

  9 Copy quote

• All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Taken, Greatness, Want

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

  10 Copy quote

• Dialogue should show the relationships among people.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, People, Should

  5 Copy quote

• Plot is the knowing of destination.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Knowing, Plot, Destination

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  5 Copy quote

• whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Holiday, Talking, Ideas

  5 Copy quote

• Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the whole, it would seem they adapt themselves well, perhaps better than we do, to changing world conditions - they enlarge their domain, shift their hold on our nerves, and, dispossessed of one habitat, set up house in another. The universal battiness of our century looks like providing them with a propitious climate.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  House, World, May

  7 Copy quote

• Sacrificers ... are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get it both ways. A person knows themselves that they're able to do without.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Sacrifice, Able, Way

  5 Copy quote

• I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Conflict, Feels, I Can

  7 Copy quote

• ...the power-loving temperament is more dangerous when it either prefers or is forced to operate in what is materially a void. Wehave everything to dread from the dispossessed.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Power, Void, Dangerous

  9 Copy quote

• Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Life, Conceited, Narcissism

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

  13 Copy quote

• Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, People, Suffering

  Elizabeth Bowen (2015). “Bowen's Court & Seven Winters”, p.205, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• ... it appears to me that problems, inherent in any writing, loom unduly large when one looks ahead. Though nothing is easy, little is quite impossible.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Looks, Littles

  5 Copy quote

• writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  States, Subjects, Susceptibility

  5 Copy quote

• The child lives in the book; but just as much the book lives in the child.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Children, Book, Reading

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

  6 Copy quote

• Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Character, Plot, Should

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

  6 Copy quote

• What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique.

  Elizabeth Bowen

  Writing, Character, Unique

  Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

  6 Copy quote

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