Meetings that do not come off keep a character of their own. They stay as they were projected.
Elizabeth Bowenwhenever possible I avoid talking. Reprieve from talking is my idea of a holiday. At risk of seeming unsociable, which I am, I admit I love to be left in a beatific trance, when I am in one. Friendly Romans recognize that wish.
Elizabeth BowenEverything is very quiet, the streets are never crowded, and the people one dislikes are out of town.
Elizabeth BowenThe heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
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