As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with "characters," or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Are you really an orphan? Yes, I am, said Portia a shade shortly. Are you? No, not at present, but I suppose it's a… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or,… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
“First love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences,… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
