357 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money – the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse.

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.

Nobody speaks the truth when there’s something they must have.

First love, with its frantic haughty imagination, swings its object clear of the everyday, over the rut of living, making him all looks, silences, gestures, attitudes, a burning phrase with no context. This isolation, young love and hero worship accomplish without remorse; they hardly know tenderness.

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. I haven’t wanted to hurt you; I haven’t wanted to touch you in any way. When I try and show you the truth I fill you with such despair. Life is so much more impossible than you think.

Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day.

It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you know you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside gathers up defensively; something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be the same again.

Yes, writing a novel, my boy, is like driving pigs to market – you have one of them making a bolt down the wrong lane; another won’t get over the right stile...

Don’t you understand that all language is dead currency? How they keep on playing shop with it all the same...