Quote

Nothing, that is say no one, can be such an inexorable tour-conductor as one's own conscience or sense of duty, if one allows either the upper hand: the self-bullying that goes on in the name of sight-seeing is grievous.

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
Sense
Travel
Inexorable
Hands
Duty
Conductor
Nothing
Goes
Upper
Self
Name
Bullying
Either
Tour
Hand
Allows
Seeing
Conscience
Names
Sight
Grievous

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Nobody speaks the truth when there's something they must have.
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The 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.
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... any fictionis bound to be transposed autobiography.
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The paradox of romantic love -- that what one possesses, one can no longer desire -- was at work.
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Have not all poetic truths been already stated? The essence of a poetic truth is that no statement of it can be final.
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life is a succession of readjustments.
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Mechanical difficulties with language are the outcome of internal difficulties with thought.
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No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
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Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.
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In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work.
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one should discuss one's difficulties only when they are over.
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To walk into history is to be free at once, to be at large among people.
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Art, at any rate in a novel, must be indissolubly linked with craft.
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nothing is more restful than conformity.
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Some people are molded by their admirations, others by their hostilities.
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Temperamentally, the writer exists on happenings, on contacts, conflicts, action and reaction, speed, pressure, tension. Were he acontemplative purely, he would not write.
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What I have found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.
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A 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.
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The story must spring from an impression or perception pressing enough to have made the writer write. It should magnetize the imagination and give pleasure.
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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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