Wariness had driven away poetry; from hesitating to feel came the moment when you no longer could.
Elizabeth BowenWho is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.
Elizabeth BowenMechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
Elizabeth BowenImagination of my kind is most caught, most fired, most worked upon by the unfamiliar: I have thrivenon the changes and chances, the dislocations andcontrasts which have made up so much of my life.
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 Bowen