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. Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes From Elizabeth Bowen Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms. Elizabeth Bowen narcissism conceited life Also, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all. Elizabeth Bowen suffering children people Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience. Elizabeth Bowen experience understanding interesting 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. Elizabeth Bowen clothes passion roots Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could. Elizabeth Bowen driven moments feelings Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at? Elizabeth Bowen Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt. Elizabeth Bowen differences expectations dream to leap is not only to leap, it is to hit the ground somewhere. Elizabeth Bowen leap We have really no absent friends. Elizabeth Bowen absent-friends absent absence Mr. [Aldous] Huxley has been the alarming young man for a long time, a sort of perpetual clever nephew who can be relied on to flutter the lunch party. Whatever will he say next? How does he think of those things? He has been deplored once or twice, but feeling is in his favor: he is steadily read. He is at once the truly clever person and the stupid person's idea of the clever person; he is expected to be relentless, to administer intellectual shocks. Elizabeth Bowen party stupid clever What's the matter with this country is the matter with the lot of us individually - our sense of personality is a sense of outrage. Elizabeth Bowen personality matter country fashion seems to exist for an abstract person who is not you or me. Elizabeth Bowen abstract fashion persons nothing is more restful than conformity. Elizabeth Bowen restful conformity whenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish. Elizabeth Bowen holiday talking ideas Some ideas, like dandelions in lawns, strike tenaciously: you may pull off the top but the root remains, drives down suckers and may even sprout again. Elizabeth Bowen roots may ideas nobody ever dies of an indignity. Elizabeth Bowen indignity embarrassment dies Makes of men date, like makes of car. Elizabeth Bowen car men History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate. Elizabeth Bowen drama night book Convention was our safeguard: could one have stronger? Elizabeth Bowen conventions stronger in my experience one thing you don't learn from is anything anyone set up to be a lesson; what you are to know you pick up as you go along. Elizabeth Bowen learning growth lessons
