357 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

But a man must live. Not for nothing do we invest so much of ourselves in other people's lives—or even in momentary pictures of people we do not know. It cuts both ways: the happy group inside the lighted window, the figure in long grass in the orchard seen from the train stay and support us in our dark hours. Illusions are art, for the feeling person, and it is by art that we live, if we do.

But here I do see how everyone feels.""I wonder if I like that," said Eddie. "I suspect how people feel, and that seems to me bad enough—I wonder if the truth would be worse or better. The truth, of course I mean, about other people. I know only too well how I feel.

Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.

What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.

She was in that flagging mood when to go on living seems only to load more unmeaning moments on to your memory.

You and I are enough to break anyone's heart—how can we not break our own?

There were readers who could expect no more from life, and just dared to look in books to see how much they had missed.

Did Anna also, sometimes not know what to do next? Because she knew what to do next, because she knew what to laugh at, what to say, did it always follow that she knew where to turn? Inside everyone, is there an anxious person who stands to hesitate in an empty room?

The way one is envisaged by other people - what easier way is there of envisaging oneself? There is a fatalism in one's acceptance of it. Solitude is not the solution, one feels followed. Choice - choice of those who are to surround one, choice of those most likely to see you rightly - is the only escape.