Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen
Elizabeth Bowen, CBEwas an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth7 June 1899
CountryIreland
women literature intimacy
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.
mixtures language statements
Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
giving want darling
Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.
subjects
Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.
relationship air two
With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.
running loneliness long
Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.
conflict feels i-can
I can't see or feel the conflict between love and religion. To me, they're the same thing.
writing bears
Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning.
writing light color
Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.
real writing would-be
Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.
lying writing doe
The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling.
writing character unique
What must novel dialogue . . . really be and do? It must be pointed, intentional, relevant. It must crystallize situation. It must express character. It must advance plot. During dialogue, the characters confront one another. The confrontation is in itself an occasion. Each one of these occasions, throughout the novel, is unique.
writing character mean
Dialogue is the ideal means of showing what is between the characters. It crystallizes relationships. It should, ideally, be so effective as to make analysis or explanation of the relationships between the characters unnecessary.
writing character fighting
Short of a small range of physical acts-a fight, murder, lovemaking-dialogue is the most vigorous and visible inter-action of which characters in a novel are capable. Speech is what characters do to each other.