357 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

We have really no absent friends.

But in general, for the purposes of most novelists, the number of objects genuinely necessary for. . .describing a scene will be found to be very small.

The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.

Young girls like the excess of any quality. Without knowing, they want to suffer, to suffer they must exaggerate; they like to have loud chords struck on them.

Each piece of dialogue MUST be "something happening". . .The "amusing" for its OWN sake should above all be censored. . .The functional use of dialogue for the plot must be the first thing in the writer's mind. Where functional usefulness cannot be established, dialogue must be left out.

Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.

Everything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.

Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?

For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal.