Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
life conceited narcissism
Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
change life-is succession
life is a succession of readjustments.
real real-life novel
In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.
short-life cutting class
Sins cut boldly up through every class in society, but mere misdemeanours show a certain level in life.
life positive-attitude diversity
If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
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.
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.
absence absent-friends absent
We have really no absent friends.
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.