---
title: "12 Knows Quotes By Elizabeth Bowen"
description: "12 Knows quotes by Elizabeth Bowen. Plus more from Elizabeth Bowen and more Knows sayings from other authors."
image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/740/elizabeth-bowen-1197_absence_the-heart-may-think-it-knows-better-the_856635.png"
---

> [The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/the-heart-may-think-it-knows-better-the-senses-know-that-absence/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/740/elizabeth-bowen-1197_absence_the-heart-may-think-it-knows-better-the_856635.png)

> [in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/in-my-experience-one-thing-you-don-t-learn-from-is-anything-anyone/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/c36/elizabeth-bowen-1197_education_in-my-experience-one-thing-you-don-t-lea_787614.png)

> [The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/the-most-steady-the-most-self-sufficient-nature-depends-more-than-it/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/460/elizabeth-bowen-1197_chosen_the-most-steady-the-most-self-sufficient_421560.png)

> [ \[My early stories\] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet. ](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/my-early-stories-are-the-work-of-a-living-writer-whom-i-know-in-a/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/7a0/elizabeth-bowen-1197_fiction_my-early-stories-are-the-work-of-a-livin_2403622.png)

> [Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/nothing-arrives-on-paper-as-it-started-and-so-much-arrives-that-never/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/72b/elizabeth-bowen-1197_ifs_nothing-arrives-on-paper-as-it-started-a_2675259.png)

> [I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/i-know-that-i-have-in-my-make-up-layers-of-synthetic-experiences-and/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/d69/elizabeth-bowen-1197_half_i-know-that-i-have-in-my-make-up-layers_2763965.png)

> [No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/no-one-of-the-characters-in-my-novels-has-originated-so-far-as-i-know/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/01b/elizabeth-bowen-1197_books_no-one-of-the-characters-in-my-novels-ha_1202243.png)

> [The novelist's--any writer's--object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/the-novelist-s-any-writer-s-object-is-to-whittle-down-his-meaning-to/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/457/elizabeth-bowen-1197_courses_the-novelist-s-any-writer-s-object-is-to_525640.png)

> [Sacrificers ... are not the ones to pity. The ones to pity are those that they sacrifice. Oh, the sacrificers, they get…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/sacrificers-are-not-the-ones-to-pity-the-ones-to-pity-are-those-that/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/32e/elizabeth-bowen-1197_able_sacrificers-are-not-the-ones-to-pity-the_2636689.png)

> [As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with "characters," or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/as-a-novelist-i-cannot-occupy-myself-with-characters-or-at-any-rate/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5ae/elizabeth-bowen-1197_action_as-a-novelist-i-cannot-occupy-myself-wit_556221.jpg)

> [What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/what-is-a-novel-i-say-an-invented-story-at-the-same-time-a-story/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/053/elizabeth-bowen-1197_adults_what-is-a-novel-i-say-an-invented-story_760822.png)

> [I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/i-am-dead-against-art-s-being-self-expression-i-see-an-inherent/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

[Image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/826/elizabeth-bowen-1197_air_i-am-dead-against-art-s-being-self-expre_3020784.jpg)

## Other authors on Knows

## More by Elizabeth Bowen

> [Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/temperamentally-the-writer-exists-on-happenings-on-contacts-conflicts/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [“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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/are-you-really-an-orphan-yes-i-am-said-portia-a-shade-shortly-are-you/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/it-is-not-our-exalted-feelings-it-is-our-sentiments-that-build-the/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/every-love-has-a-poetic-relevance-of-its-own-each-love-brings-to/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [without fiction, either life would be insufficient or the winds from the north would blow too cold.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/without-fiction-either-life-would-be-insufficient-or-the-winds-from/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/one-s-sentiments-call-them-that-one-s-fidelities-are-so-instinctive/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [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…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/only-in-a-house-where-one-has-learnt-to-be-lonely-does-one-have-this/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/to-walk-into-history-is-to-be-free-at-once-to-be-at-large-among-people/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [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.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/the-wish-to-lead-out-one-s-lover-must-be-a-tribal-feeling-the-wish-to/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/convention-was-our-safeguard-could-one-have-stronger/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [“First love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences,…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/first-love-with-its-frantic-haughty-imagination-swings-its-object/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/to-leap-is-not-only-to-leap-it-is-to-hit-the-ground-somewhere/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/that-is-partly-why-women-marry-to-keep-up-the-fiction-of-being-in-the/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [“But Miss Pym gave an impression, somehow, of having been attacked from within .”](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/but-miss-pym-gave-an-impression-somehow-of-having-been-attacked-from/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

> [rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/elizabeth-bowen/rudeness-to-mrs-dosely-was-like-dropping-a-pat-of-butter-on-to-a-hot/)

[Elizabeth Bowen](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/elizabeth-bowen/)

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                        "text": "As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with \"characters,\" or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons \"in history.\" History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am.",
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                        "text": "What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.",
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                        "text": "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.",
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