Good general-purpose manners nowadays may be said to consist in knowing how much you can get away with. Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes From Elizabeth Bowen Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie; when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness. Elizabeth Bowen tradition ties remember Childish fantasy, like the sheath over the bud, not only protects but curbs the terrible budding spirit, protects not only innocence from the world, but the world from the power of innocence. Elizabeth Bowen bud spirit world Each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant; impossible socially, but full scale; and it's the knockings and battering we sometimes hear in each other that keep our banter from utter banality. Elizabeth Bowen giants impossible depression The silence of a shut park does not sound like country silence: it is tense and confined. Elizabeth Bowen silence nature country Bring all your intelligence to bear on your beginning. Elizabeth Bowen bears writing Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting. Elizabeth Bowen color light writing 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 real would-be writing The craft of the novelist does lie first of all in story-telling. Elizabeth Bowen novelists writing lying 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.... 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. Elizabeth Bowen darling want giving Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there. Elizabeth Bowen elbows solitude looks All your youth you want to have your greatness taken for granted; when you find it taken for granted, you are unnerved. Elizabeth Bowen greatness taken want Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain. Elizabeth Bowen toxic brain war If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea. Elizabeth Bowen surface writing ideas No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye. Elizabeth Bowen mysterious vision eye The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. Elizabeth Bowen long-distance-relationship heart thinking The best that an individual can do is to concentrate on what he or she can do, in the course of a burning effort to do it better. Elizabeth Bowen burning individual effort Language is a mixture of statement and evocation. Elizabeth Bowen statements mixtures language Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone. Elizabeth Bowen locks doors lying Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it. Elizabeth Bowen degrees shapes literature That is partly why women marry - to keep up the fiction of being in the hub of things. Elizabeth Bowen hub fiction
