357 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

I wonder where father's gone. He repeatedly goes out but never comes in.

There are still places I cannot walk past, though we only walked here those two days. When I walk I look for places we did not go.

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 don't exist.

I am often upset when I meet a person again.

But something that should have been going on had not gone on: something had not happened.

At Spezia when I am angry I go full of smoke inside, but when you make me angry I see everything.

Spezia offered Leopold almost nothing: his precocity devoured itself there, rejecting the steep sunny coast and nibbling blue edge of the sea that had drowned Shelley. His spirit became crustacean under douches of culture and mild philosophic chat from his Uncle Dee, who was cultured rather than erudite.

People in love, in whom every sense is open, cannot beat off the influence of a place.