Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
hope expectations desperation
There's something so showy about desperation, it takes hard wits to see it's a grandiose form of funk.
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.
silence speak climax
Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
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.
girl luxury knowing
Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to have loud chords struck on them.
Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?
thinking people important
Education is not so important as people think.
sports two socializing
Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland ...
funny dog thinking
Dogs are a habit, I think.
air important guarantees
After inside upheavals, it is important to fix on imperturbable things. Their imperturbableness, their air that nothing has happened renews our guarantee.
regret children anticipate
children like change - for one thing, they never anticipate regret.
dog children moving
When one is a child, the disposition of objects, tables and chairs and doors, seems part of the natural order: a house-move lets in chaos - as it does for a dog.
people youth instruments
very young people are true but not resounding instruments.
stronger conventions
Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger?