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Quote by Elizabeth Bowen

“[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.”

Quote by Elizabeth Bowen

Author

Elizabeth Bowen

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. more

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“... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.”

Fiction Bounds Autobiography

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“... into the novel goes such taste as I have for rational behaviour and social portraiture. The short story, as I see it to be, allows for what is crazy about humanity: obstinacies, inordinate heroisms, "immortal longings.”

Stories Humanity Social Fiction Novel Crazy Taste Longing Rational Immortal Short Story Heroism Behaviour Obstinacy Portraiture

Book:Stories

Source: Stories

“...though one can be callous in Ireland one cannot be wholly opaque or material. An unearthly disturbance works in the spirit; reason can never reconcile one to life; nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.”

Want Reason Spirit Materials Materialism Ireland Reconcile Disturbance Callous Opaque

Book:Bowen's Court

Source: Bowen's Court

“... in general, the Anglo-Irish do not make good dancers; they are too spritely and conscious; they are incapable of one kind of trance or of being seemingly impersonal. And, for the formal, pure dance they lack the formality: about their stylishness (for they have stylishness) there is something impromptu, slightly disorderly.”

Kind Pure Conscious Dance Dancer Incapable Formal Trance Formality

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“The short story is at an advantage over the novel, and can claim its nearer kinship to poetry, because it must be more concentrated, can be more visionary, and is not weighed down (as the novel is bound to be) by facts, explanation, or analysis. I do not mean to say that the short story is by any means exempt from the laws of narrative: it must observe them, but on its own terms.”

Mean Facts Stories Law Term Fiction Novel Advantage Claims Bounds Narrative Analysis Explanation Poetry Is Short Story Visionaries Kinship

Book:Stories

Source: Stories

“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

“At the age of twelve I was finding the world too small: it appeared to me like a dull, trim back garden, in which only trivial games could be played.”

World Age Games Childhood Findings Garden Experience Dull Twelve Restlessness

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.”

Artist Ornaments Unthinkable

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“Imagination of my kind is most caught, most fired, most worked upon by the unfamiliar: I have thrivenon the changes and chances, the dislocations andcontrasts which have made up so much of my life.”

Kind Made Change Imagination Chance Caught Unfamiliar Dislocation

Author:Elizabeth Bowen

“This, my first [bicycle] had an intrinsic beauty. And it opened for me an era of all but flying, which roads emptily crossing theairy, gold-gorsy Common enhanced. Nothing since has equalled that birdlike freedom.”

Firsts Freedom Common Gold Flying Eras Bicycle Crossings

Author:Elizabeth Bowen