Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at? Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen More Quotes From Elizabeth Bowen Story involves action. Action towards an end not to be foreseen (by the reader) but also towards an end which, having been reached, must be seen to have been from the start inevitable. Elizabeth Bowen endsstoriesaction We desert those who desert us; we cannot afford to suffer; we must live how we can. Elizabeth Bowen desertsurvivalsuffering 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. Elizabeth Bowen bullyingsighttravel All my life I have said, "Whatever happens there will always be tables and chairs"--and what a mistake. Elizabeth Bowen tables-and-chairsmistakewar 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. Elizabeth Bowen narrativelawmean ... 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. Elizabeth Bowen dancekindconscious every short story is an experiment - what one must ask is not only, did it come off, but was it, as an experiment, worth making? Elizabeth Bowen short-storyexperimentsstories Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking. Elizabeth Bowen halfcharacterfirsts ... a novel survives because of its basic truthfulness, its having within it something general and universal, and a quality of imaginative perception which applies just as much now as it did in the fifty or hundred or two hundred years since the novel came to life. Elizabeth Bowen truthtwoyears Style is the thing that's always a bit phony, and at the same time you cannot write without style. Elizabeth Bowen phonystylewriting Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft. Elizabeth Bowen craftsnovelart ... love dreads being isolated, being left to speak in a void -- at the beginning it would often rather listen than speak. Elizabeth Bowen voiddreadspeak Every love has a poetic relevance of its own; each love brings to light only what to it is relevant. Outside lies the junk-yard of what does not matter. Elizabeth Bowen junklightlying The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work. Elizabeth Bowen paradoxromantic-lovedesire In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed. Elizabeth Bowen novelreal-lifereal What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality. Elizabeth Bowen truthmeanreality Characters should on the whole, be under rather than over articulate. What they intend to say should be more evident, more striking (because of its greater inner importance to the plot) than what they arrive at saying. Elizabeth Bowen plotshouldcharacter As a novelist, I cannot occupy myself with "characters," or at any rate central ones, who lack panache, in one or another sense, who would be incapable of a major action or a major passion, or who have not a touch of the ambiguity, the ultimate unaccountability, the enlarging mistiness of persons "in history." History, as more austerely I now know it, is not romantic. But I am. Elizabeth Bowen passioncharacterhistory writers do not find subjects: subjects find them. There is not so much a search as a state of open susceptibility. Elizabeth Bowen susceptibilitysubjectsstates Plot is the knowing of destination. Elizabeth Bowen plotdestinationknowing
