Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
art children air
I am dead against art's being self-expression. I see an inherent failure in any story which fails to detach itself from the author-detach itself in the sense that a well-blown soap-bubble detaches itself from the bowl of the blower's pipe and spherically takes off into the air as a new, whole, pure, iridescent world. Whereas the ill-blown bubble, as children know, timidly adheres to the bowl's lip, then either bursts or sinks flatly back again.
art home theatre
Art is for [the Irish] inseparable from artifice: of that, the theatre is the home. Possibly, it was England made me a novelist.
art crafts novel
Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft ...
artist ornaments unthinkable
... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.
art hurt memorable
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
art feelings literature
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.
life conceited narcissism
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
country literature married
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
taken greatness want
All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved.
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.
passion may habit
Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.
silence speak climax
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
absence absent-friends absent
We have really no absent friends.