the process of reading is reciprocal; the book is no more than a formula, to be furnished out with images out of the reader's mind.
Elizabeth Bowen... artists were intended to be an ornament to society. As a society in themselves they are unthinkable.
Elizabeth BowenThe novelist's--any writer's--object is to whittle down his meaning to the exactest and finest possible point. What, of course, isfatal is when he does not know what he does mean: he has no point to sharpen.
Elizabeth BowenWith 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 Bowen