Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
country literature married
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
war brain literature
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
writing ideas surface
If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.
literature outcomes language
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
eye vision mysterious
No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
waste firsts littles
But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.
solitude looks elbows
Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.
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.
rome curiosity courtesy
Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.
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.
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.
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.
wine rome yellow
To the sun Rome owes its underlying glow, and its air called golden - to me, more the yellow of white wine; like wine it raises agreeability to poetry.