Elizabeth Bowen

Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.

— Elizabeth Bowen

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.

— Elizabeth Bowen

“A living dog's better than a dead lion.”

— Elizabeth Bowen

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

— Elizabeth Bowen

Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to…

— Elizabeth Bowen

A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. It…

— Elizabeth Bowen

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

— Elizabeth Bowen

We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.

— Elizabeth Bowen

somehow at parties at which one stays standing up one seems to require to be more concentratedly intelligent than one does at…

— Elizabeth Bowen

Almost everyone admits to hunger during the Opera.... Hunger is so exalting that during a last act you practically levitate.

— Elizabeth Bowen

Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.

— Elizabeth Bowen

It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so…

— Elizabeth Bowen

Disappointment tears the bearable film off life.

— Elizabeth Bowen

“Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is…

— Elizabeth Bowen

What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to…

— Elizabeth Bowen

“You know, even grown-up people cannot do what they want most" "Then why grow up?”

— Elizabeth Bowen

in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to…

— Elizabeth Bowen

Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.

— Elizabeth Bowen

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

— Elizabeth Bowen

Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and…

— Elizabeth Bowen

“Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to…

— Elizabeth Bowen

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To…

— Elizabeth Bowen

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

— Elizabeth Bowen

“Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day.”

— Elizabeth Bowen

Plot is the knowing of destination.

— Elizabeth Bowen