With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify. There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
Elizabeth BowenI pity people who do not care for Society. They are poorer for the oblation they do not make.
Elizabeth BowenI know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.
Elizabeth BowenDialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk.
Elizabeth BowenBut complex people are never certain that they are not crooks, never certain their passports are quite in order, and are, therefore, unnerved by the slightest thing.
Elizabeth BowenDialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.
Elizabeth Bowen