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.

Elizabeth Bowen

Categorized in : Writing Would Be Real

When you love someone all your saved up wishes start coming out.

Elizabeth Bowen

crush love relationship

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

Elizabeth Bowen

personality character people

We are minor in everything but our passions.

Elizabeth Bowen

minors passion literature

we can surmount the anger we feel. To find oneself like a young tree inside a tomb is to discover the power to crack the tomb and grow up to any height.

Elizabeth Bowen

growing-up anger tree

Certain books come to meet me, as do people.

Elizabeth Bowen

reading book people

The most striking fault in work by young or beginning novelists, submitted for criticism, is irrelevance--due either to infatuation or indecision. To direct such an author's attention to the imperative of relevance is certainly the most useful--and possibly the only--help that can be given.

Elizabeth Bowen

irrelevance faults criticism

The writer, unlike his non-writing adult friend, has no predisposed outlook; he seldom observes deliberately. He sees what he didnot intend to see; he remembers what does not seem wholly possible. Inattentive learner in the schoolroom of life, he keeps some faculty free to veer and wander. His is the roving eye.

Elizabeth Bowen

adults eye writing

Silences can be as different as sounds.

Elizabeth Bowen

different silence sound

Chance is better than choice; it is more lordly. Chance is God, choice is man.

Elizabeth Bowen

luck choices men

Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.

Elizabeth Bowen

selfishness impossible love

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.

Elizabeth Bowen

mistress writing character

She had one of those charming faces which, according to the angle from which you see them, look either melancholy or impertinent. Her eyes were grey; her trick of narrowing them made her seem to reflect, the greater part of the time, in the dusk of her second thoughts. With that mood, that touch of arriere pensee, went an uncertain, speaking set of lips.

Elizabeth Bowen

eye faces looks

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

Elizabeth Bowen

paper writing littles

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

Elizabeth Bowen

literature character directors

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

Elizabeth Bowen

fate destiny eagles

Ghosts seem harder to please than we are; it is as though they haunted for haunting’s sake -- much as we relive, brood, and smoulder over our pasts.

Elizabeth Bowen

haunting sake past

Good-byes breed a sort of distaste for whomever you say good-bye to; this hurts, you feel, this must not happen again.

Elizabeth Bowen

hurt goodbye inspirational

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

Elizabeth Bowen

literature feelings art

It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.

Elizabeth Bowen

pockets inspiration friendship

It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home.

Elizabeth Bowen

emotions-feelings sentiments home