The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Elizabeth BowenWhat is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.
Elizabeth BowenThe importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.
Elizabeth Bowen