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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

“Dress has never been at all a straightforward business: so much subterranean interest and complex feeling attaches to it. As a topic ... it has a flowery head but deep roots in the passion. On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do. ... Ten minutes talk about clothes (except between perfect friends) tends to make everyone present either overbearing, guarded or touchy.”

Ifs Feels Reason Feelings Passion Interest Perfect Minutes Subjects Ten Clothes Concern Roots Dresses Complexes Indifferent Topics Straightforward Guarded Touchy Overbearing Deep Roots

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.”

Ifs Self Hands Names Seeing Duty Goes On Travel Conscience Sight Bullying Conductor Inexorable Upper Hand

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think ... if I thought more I might write less.”

Ifs Thinking Needs Writing Seems Might Certain Amount Intelligent Towns Rate Rounds Small Changes

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable. If you and I were capable of being altogether house-trained and made jolly, we should be nicer people, but not writers.”

People Ifs Should Made House Solitude Capable Solitary Jolly

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

“If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.”

Ifs Writing Ideas Novel Surface Theme Illustrating

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.”

Ifs Persons Art Feelings Spirituality Literature Illusion Artistic Mysticism

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.”

Ifs Way Life Looks Culture Causes Advice Diversity Social Justice One Way Positive Attitude Alarms

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?”

Book:The Last September

Source: The Last September

“Nothing arrives on paper as it started, and so much arrives that never started at all. To write is always to rave a little-even if one did once know what one meant”

Ifs Knows Writing Littles Paper Rave

Book:The Death Of The Heart

Source: The Death Of The Heart

“On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do.”

Ifs Feels Reason Subjects Clothes Concern Dresses Indifferent

Book:Collected Impressions

Source: Collected Impressions

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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