...though one can be callous in Ireland one cannot be wholly opaque or material. An unearthly disturbance works in the spirit; reason can never reconcile one to life; nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.
Elizabeth BowenAlso, perhaps children are sterner than grown-up people in their refusal to suffer, in their refusal, even, to feel at all.
Elizabeth BowenThe innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet - when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.
Elizabeth BowenA Bowen, in the first place, made Bowen's Court. Since then, with a rather alarming sureness, Bowen's Court has made all the succeeding Bowens.
Elizabeth BowenDress has never been at all a straightforward business: so much subterranean interest and complex feeling attaches to it. As a topic ... it has a flowery head but deep roots in the passion. On the subject of dress almost no one, for one or another reason, feels truly indifferent: if their own clothes do not concern them, somebody else's do. ... Ten minutes talk about clothes (except between perfect friends) tends to make everyone present either overbearing, guarded or touchy.
Elizabeth Bowen