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Often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and color. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much of my writing is verbal painting.

Elizabeth Bowen

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Elizabeth Bowen
Age: 73 †
Born: 1899
Born: June 7
Died: 1973
Died: February 22
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Dublin city
Elisabeth Bowen
Often
Verbal
Write
Sensitivity
Light
Painter
Writing
Line
Trying
Painting
Work
Color
Much
Lines
Make
Words

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Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.
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Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.
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We are minor in everything but our passions.
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To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.
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If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
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very young people are true but not resounding instruments.
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Certain books come to meet me, as do people.
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Childish fantasy, like the sheath over the bud, not only protects but curbs the terrible budding spirit, protects not only innocence from the world, but the world from the power of innocence.
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nothing is more restful than conformity.
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It is in this unearthly first hour of spring twilight that earth's almost agonized livingness is most felt. This hour is so dreadful to some people that they hurry indoors and turn on the lights.
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Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.
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We desert those who desert us we cannot afford to suffer we must live how we can.
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Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.
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Characters are not created by writers. They pre-exist and have to be found.
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Jane Austen, much in advance of her day, was a mistress of the use of the dialogue. She used it as dialogue should be used-to advance the story not only to show the characters, but to advance.
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All good dialogue perhaps deals with something unprecedented.
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Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.
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[My early stories] are the work of a living writer whom I know in a sense, but can never meet.
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With three or more people there is something bold in the air: direct things get said which would frighten two people alone and conscious of each inch of their nearness to one another. To be three is to be in public - you feel safe.
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... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.
Elizabeth Bowen