Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
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.
fashion abstract persons
fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me.
forgiveness states should
Forgiveness should be an act, but this is a state with him.
learning growth lessons
in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along.
drama book night
History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.
home firsts succeed
A Bowen, in the first place, made Bowen's Court. Since then, with a rather alarming sureness, Bowen's Court has made all the succeeding Bowens.
ideas roots dandelions
Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again.