About Elizabeth Bowen: Elizabeth Bowen was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer.
One's sentiments -- call them that -- one's fidelities are so instinctive that one hardly knows they exist: only when they are betrayed or, worse still, when one betrays them does one realize their power.
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 d...
She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish.
Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.
A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.
Jealousy is no more than feeling alone against smiling enemies.
Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.
But Miss Pym gave an impression, somehow, of having been attacked from .
He feels spikes everywhere and rushes to impale himself.
And because no one answered or cared and a conversation went on without her she felt profoundly lonely, suspecting once more for herself a particular doom of exclusion. Something of the trees in their intimacy of shadow was shared by the husband and ...
Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude to anyone else's husband.
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.
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
Education is not so important as people think.
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
