Elizabeth Bowen quotes - page 2

That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things. (Elizabeth Bowen)
If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique. (Elizabeth Bowen)
All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Education is not so important as people think. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
This is the worst of love, this unmeant mystification - someone smiling and going out without saying where, or a letter arriving, being read in your presence, put away, not explained, or: "No, alas, I can't to-night" on the telephone - that, one person having set up without knowing, the other cannot undo without the where? who? why? that brings them both down a peg. Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively: something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse, they may become dear and fasten like so many leeches on your heart. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
I am sick of the governessy attitude of our age, which is coming to be more genuinely presumptuous, nosier and more busybody than the Victorian. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
It is thought that women inspire by their beauty; more often they do so by their longings. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
[U]ntruths are thieves, robbing us of a birthright. (Elizabeth Bowen)
[T]here is a flaw in civilization from the instant it has to admit fear. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't. View quote
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. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen
Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities. View quote
Elizabeth Bowen