Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
silence speak climax
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
writing light color
Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.
writing intelligent thinking
I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.
knowing plot destination
Plot is the knowing of destination.
lying light doe
Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter.
Raids are slightly constipating.
writing boys pigs
Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market - you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won't get over the right stile ...
doe add novel
The novel does not simply recount experience, it adds to experience.
embarrassment dies indignity
nobody ever dies of an indignity.
dream differences expectations
Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.
book reading mind
the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.
self stimulus chosen
The most steady, the most self-sufficient nature depends, more than it knows, on its few chosen stimuli.
art hurt memorable
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
girl expression photograph
She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.