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Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen Books

Novelist

Elizabeth Bowen was an Irish-born British novelist known for her intricate psychological portrayals and profound insights into British society from the late Victorian era to the mid-20th century. Her works often focus on female characters, exploring themes of family, love, class, and identity.

The Death Of The Heart

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The House In Paris

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Collected Impressions

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Bowen's Court

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Pictures and conversations

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The Mulberry Tree

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A Time In Rome

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The Heat of the Day

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Stories

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The Last September

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Bowen's Court & Seven Winters

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The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen

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The Hotel: A Novel

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A World of Love

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Elizabeth Bowen's Irish Stories

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Eva Trout

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Listening in: Broadcasts, Speeches, and...

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Notes on Eire

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People, Places, Things: Essays

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Seven winters

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The Hotel

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The cat jumps, and other stories

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Related Quotes

“While I stand and regard it, the indifference to myself shown by a work of art in itself is art.”

Art Indifference Museum Elizabeth Bowen Work Of Art

Book:A Time In Rome

Source: A Time In Rome

“You and I are enough to break anyone's heart—how can we not break our own?”

Sad Heartbreak Heartbreaking Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“What's in your mind, I suppose, is, why should you rise to occasions when I don't? Let's face it—who ever is adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.”

Heartbreak Expectations Disappointment Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Live Up To Rise To The Occasion

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“In you there may persist some spark of what's everywhere else gone out: who knows why else I've loved you? Through love you've lit me – don't quarrel now with which way the fire blows.”

Love Passion Fire

Book:The Heat of the Day

Source: The Heat of the Day

“She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory.”

Book:The House In Paris

Source: The House In Paris

“But a man must live. Not for nothing do we invest so much of ourselves in other people's lives—or even in momentary pictures of people we do not know. It cuts both ways: the happy group inside the lighted window, the figure in long grass in the orchard seen from the train stay and support us in our dark hours. Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.”

Art Living Emotions Illusions Other People Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible socially, but full-scale - and that it's the knockings and baterrings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banaility.”

Madness Lunacy Social Etiquette

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Ever since that evening when you gave me my hat, I've been as true to you as I've got it in me to be. Don't force me to where untruth starts. You say nothing would make you hate me. But once make me hate myself and you'd make me hate you.”

Truth Relationship True Fidelity Love And Hate Self Hatred Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“He said he judged people by their characters. I said was that always a quite good way of judging, as people's characters get so different at times, as it depends so much what happens to them.”

Character Judgment Characters Circumstance Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Changeable

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“You agonise me by being so agonised.”

Empathy Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Sympathetic Pain

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Where they were concerned, the ban, the check, the caution as to all spending and most of all the expenditure of feeling restricted them. Wariness had driven away poetry: from hesitating to feel came the moment you no longer could.”

Loneliness Feeling

Book:The Heat of the Day

Source: The Heat of the Day

“We observe small rites, but we defend ourselves against that terrible memory that is stronger than will. We defend ourselves from the rooms, the scenes, the objects that make for hallucination, that make the senses start up and fasten upon a ghost. We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can.”

Loneliness Memory Resilience Absence

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“If they should only be ill,' she said, 'there would be so many little things we could do for them. It does seem in a kind of a way an opportunity. I often think it is only when a man is ill that he understands what a woman means in his life.”

Book:The Last September

Source: The Last September

“The place gave out a look of hollow desuetude, as though its desertion would last forever.”

Forever Lonely Setting Deserted Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“There were readers who could expect no more from life, and just dared to look in books to see how much they had missed.”

Books Sad Readers Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Living Vicariously

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Everything in her life, she could see now, had taken the same turn—as for love, she often puzzled and puzzled, without ever allowing herself to be fully sad, as to what could be wrong with the formula. It does not work, she thought. At times there were moments when she asked herself if she could have been in the wrong: she would almost rather think that. What she thought she regretted was her lack of guard, her wayward extravagance—but had she all the time been more guarded than she imagined, had she been deceitful, had she been seen through? For what had always happened she could still not account. There seemed to be some way she did not know of by which people managed to understand each other.”

Love Understanding Relationships Sad Outsider Second Guessing Disappointments Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Wrong Turns

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Look, let's see ourselves in the distance, then we shall think, how happy they are! We're young; this is spring; this is a wood. In some sort of way or other we love each other, and our lives are before us—God pity us! Do you hear the birds?”

Love Perspective Sad Distance Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Frantic smiles at parties, overtures that have desperation behind them, miasmic reaches of talk with the lost bore, short cuts to approach through staring, squeezing or kissing all indicate that one cannot live alone. Not only is there no question of solitude, but in the long run we may not choose our company.”

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone her pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude.”

Solitude Solo Solo Travel Solitude As A Choice Solo Traveler Solo Journeys

Book:The House In Paris

Source: The House In Paris

“But here I do see how everyone feels." "I wonder if I like that," said Eddie. "I suspect how people feel, and that seems to me bad enough—I wonder if the truth would be worse or better. The truth, of course I mean, about other people. I know only too well how I feel.”

Feelings Knowledge Awareness Emotions Dialogue Ignorance Is Bliss Other People Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“All the days that go by only make me seem to be getting further and further away from the day I last saw Eddie, not nearer and nearer the day I shall see him again.”

Distance Separation Separated Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“The stupid person's idea of the clever person. [on Aldous Huxley, in Spectator magazine, 1936]”

Stupid Insult Magazine Aldous Huxley Spectator Bowen

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“The sun rose on a landscape still pale with the heat of the day before. There was no haze, but a sort of coppery burnish out of the air lit on flowing fields, rocks, the face of the one house and the cliff of limestone overhanging the river. The river gorge cut deep through the uplands. This light at this hour, so unfamiliar, brought into being a new world – painted, expectant, empty, intense.”

Book:A World of Love

Source: A World of Love

“You never quite know when you may hope to repair the damage done by going away.”

Return Damage Going Away Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Damage Done

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“It is queer to be in a place when someone has gone. It is not two other places, the place that they were there in, and the place that was there before they came. I can't get used to this third place or to staying behind.”

Gone Absence Left Behind Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“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.”

Detached Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Commitment Issues Not There All Of Me

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“There are still places I cannot walk past, though we only walked here those two days. When I walk I look for places we did not go.”

Painful Memories Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“What do you want me to say?" "I wish you would say something. Our life goes by without any comment.”

Life Dialogue Unsatisfied Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Say Something Life Goes By

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“You don't much like anything, do you?" "No, nothing," said Anna, smiling her nice fat malign smile.”

Dialogue Dislike Discontent Unsatisfied Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.”

Advice Hidden Hiding Place Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“But I should never write what had happened down. One's nature is to forget, and one ought to go by that. Memory is quite unbearable enough, but even so it leaves out quite a lot.”

Writing Memory Remembrance Unbearable Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“If one didn't let oneself swallow some few lies, I don't know how one would ever carry the past.”

Memory Repression The Past Repressed Memories Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“You think I exaggerate." "At the moment—" "Well, this sort of moment never really stops . . .”

Eternal Dialogue Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Neverending

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“Don't you see we're all full of horrible power, working against each other however much we may love?”

Love Relationships Interaction Toxic Relationships Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Inescapable

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“I cannot say anything about going away. I cannot say anything even in this diary. Perhaps it is better not to say anything ever. I must try not to say anything more to Eddie, when I have said things it has always been a mistake.”

Mistake Unspoken Elizabeth Bowen Futile The Death Of The Heart In Vain No Words Left Unsaid Suffer In Silence

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“To love makes one less clever.”

Love Love Quotes Elizabeth Bowen

Book:A Time In Rome

Source: A Time In Rome

“Language seldom fails quietly, it fails noisily.”

Language Communication Elizabeth Bowen

Book:A Time In Rome

Source: A Time In Rome

“I am much too influenced by people's manner towards me—especially Anna's I suppose. Directly people attack me, I think they are right, and hate myself, and then I hate them—the more I like them this is so.”

Sensitive Self Hatred Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“He left her and looked round for his glass again. Meanwhile, he said to himself in a quoting voice: "We are minor in everything but our passions." "Wherever did you read that?" "Nowhere: I woke up and heard myself saying it, one night." "How pompous you were in the night. I'm so glad I was asleep.”

Humor Dialogue Pompous Passions Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“I am often upset when I meet a person again.”

Social Anxiety Misanthropic Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“But something that should have been going on had not gone on: something had not happened.”

Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“He was not sprightly enough to have sprightly friends.”

Agility Sprightliness

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“He feels spikes everywhere and rushes to impale himself.”

Pain Foolishness Socially Inept

Book:The Hotel

Source: The Hotel

“At Spezia when I am angry I go full of smoke inside, but when you make me angry I see everything.”

Book:The House In Paris

Source: The House In Paris

“All the way up the house the windows were open; light came diagonally from window to window through corner rooms. Two storeys up, she could have heard a curtain rustle, but the mansion piled itself up in silence over the Montmorencys' voices.”

Haunted Houses Domestic Architecture

Book:The Last September

Source: The Last September

“The beautiful agonising mirage of the university was inescapable from. This was a forever she had no part in. The eternity was more real to her for consisting of fiery particles of transience - bridges the punt slid under, raindrops spattering the Cam with vanishing circles, shivered reflections, echoes evaporating, shadows metamorphosizing, distances shifting, glorification coming and going on buildings at a whim of the sun, grass flashing through arches, gasps of primitive breath coming from stones, dusk ebbing from waxen woodwork when doors opened. Holy pillars flowed upward and fountained out, round them being a ceaseless confluence of fanatical colours burningly staining glass. Nothing was at an end, so nothing stood still. And of this living eternity, of its kind and one of its children, had been Henry, walking beside her.”

Cambridge University

Book:Eva Trout

Source: Eva Trout

“Spezia offered Leopold almost nothing: his precocity devoured itself there, rejecting the steep sunny coast and nibbling blue edge of the sea that had drowned Shelley. His spirit became crustacean under douches of culture and mild philosophic chat from his Uncle Dee, who was cultured rather than erudite.”

Douches Crustacean

Book:The House In Paris

Source: The House In Paris

“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. I haven't wanted to hurt you; I haven't wanted to touch you in any way. When I try and show you the truth I fill you with such despair. Life is so much more impossible than you think.”

Hurt Relationship Despair Dialogue Rejection Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Commitment Issues

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“People are most themselves when suddenly woken, or when they pull darkness over their heads, or when, in the middle of the night, they commit themselves to some momentous decision.”

Night Sleep Elizabeth Bowen

Book:A Time In Rome

Source: A Time In Rome

“Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude to anyone else's husband.”

Marriage Rudeness

Book:The Last September

Source: The Last September

About the Author

Born: June 7, 1899
Died: February 22, 1973
Known for: Novelist
Quotes: 268

Related Topics

Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Writing People Literature Dialogue Novel Doe Character Knows

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

The Death Of The HeartRelated source material

The House In ParisRelated source material

Collected ImpressionsRelated source material

Bowen's CourtRelated source material

Pictures and conversationsRelated source material

The Mulberry TreeRelated source material

A Time In RomeRelated source material

The Heat of the DayRelated source material

StoriesRelated source material

The Last SeptemberRelated source material

Bowen's Court & Seven WintersRelated source material

The Collected Stories of Elizabeth BowenRelated source material

The Hotel: A NovelRelated source material

A World of LoveRelated source material

Elizabeth Bowen's Irish StoriesRelated source material

Eva TroutRelated source material

Listening in: Broadcasts, Speeches, and Interviews by Elizabeth BowenRelated source material

Notes on EireRelated source material

People, Places, Things: EssaysRelated source material

Seven wintersRelated source material

The HotelRelated source material

The cat jumps, and other storiesRelated source material

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