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Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

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.

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All Elizabeth Bowen The Death Of The Heart Writing People Literature Dialogue Novel Doe Character Knows Should Feels Firsts Ifs Seems Stories World Feelings Fiction May

Famous Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

“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

“Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.”

Character Meetings

Book:The House In Paris

Source: The House In Paris

“Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking.”

Should Firsts Has Beens Character Action Half Novel Inevitable Unpredictable Inevitability Unpredictability

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

“Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying.”

Should Whole Character Greater Importance Plot Evident

Book:Pictures and conversations

Source: Pictures and conversations

“As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with "characters," or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons "in history." History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am.”

Knows Persons Character Would Be Action Romance Passion History Majors Ultimate Rate Novelists Incapable Ambiguity Panache

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“No one of the characters in my novels has originated, so far as I know, in real life. If anything, the contrary was the case: persons playing a part in my life--the first twenty years of it--had about them something semi-fictitious.”

Ifs Knows Years Firsts Persons Real Character Cases Novel Experience Twenties Contrary Real Life

Book:Pictures and conversations

Source: Pictures and conversations

“I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.”

Feels Character Literature Directors Creator Watchers

Book:Pictures and conversations

Source: Pictures and conversations

“Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.”

People Character Growth Personality Admiration Hostility

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Dialogue in fiction is what characters do to one another.”

Character Fiction Dialogue Crafts

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“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 Situation Novel Unique Dialogue Occasions Plot Relevant Confrontation

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

“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.”

Should Writing Mean Character Ideals Dialogue Analysis Explanation Unnecessary

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

“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.”

Writing Character Action Fighting Novel Speech Capable Murder Dialogue Range Visible Vigorous

Book:The Mulberry Tree

Source: The Mulberry Tree

“Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story; not only to show the characters, but to advance.”

Should Writing Character Stories Use Shows Used Dialogue Jane Mistress Austen

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.”

Character Found

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

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 Should Feels Firsts Ifs Seems Stories World Feelings Fiction May

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

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