What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
My writing, I am prepared to think, may be a substitute for something I have been born without - a so-called normal… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us - that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy. On the… — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with. — Elizabeth Bowen Copy Share Image
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The… — 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
