Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
book reading people
Certain books come to meet me, as do people.
leap
to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere.
stronger conventions
Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?
rome curiosity courtesy
Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.
fashion abstract persons
fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.
feelings moments driven
Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.
forgiveness states should
Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.
learning growth lessons
in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.
drama book night
History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.
home firsts succeed
A Bowen, in the first place, made Bowen's Court. Since then, with a rather alarming sureness, Bowen's Court has made all the succeeding Bowens.
ideas roots dandelions
Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.
suffering noise indifference
One can suffer a convulsion of one's entire nature, and, unless it makes some noise, no one notices. It's not just that we are incurious; we completely lack any sense of each other's existences.
sports mistake two
The Irish landowner, partly from laziness but also from an indifferent delicacy, does not interfere in the lives of the people round. Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland, but these cannot operate the whole time: on the whole, the landowner leaves his tenants and work-people to make their own mistakes, while he makes his.
holiday talking ideas
whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.