Top 37 Quotes by Elizabeth Bowen

Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.

Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.

I became, and remain, my characters' close and intent watcher: their director, never. Their creator I cannot feel that I was, or am.

Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

If a theme or idea is too near the surface, the novel becomes simply a tract illustrating an idea.

Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.