Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
hot rudeness manners
rudeness to Mrs. Dosely was like dropping a pat of butter on to a hot plate - it slid and melted away.
character meetings
Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.
memories unique identity
Memory must be patchy; what is more alarming is its face-savingness. Something in one shrinks from catching it out - unique to oneself, one's own, one's claim to identity, it implicates one's identity in its fibbing.
memories powerful half
I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.
memories cups
memory is to love what the saucer is to the cup.
silence stranger taxi
Silence sat in the taxi, as though a stranger had got in.
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.
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.
holiday talking ideas
whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.
rome curiosity courtesy
Curiosity in Rome is a form of courtesy.
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.
fashion abstract persons
fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.