Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
children talking literature
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
want reason reconcile
Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.
wanted
...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.
reading reading-novels novel
the slight sense of degeneracy induced by reading novels before luncheon
waste firsts littles
But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.
solitude looks elbows
Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.
literature shapes degrees
Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.
lying doors locks
Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.
literature outcomes language
Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
eye vision mysterious
No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
long-distance-relationship heart thinking
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
effort burning individual
The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better.
interesting understanding experience
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
thinking literature shows
I think the main thing, don't you, is to keep the show on the road.