Quotations From ELIZABETH BOWEN

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• 31.

  [A writer] should try not to be too far, personally, below the level of his work.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. from Why Do I Write? (1948). As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 5, by Victoria Glendinning (1979).
  
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• 32.

  Through the particular, in wartime, I felt the high-voltage current of the general pass.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 8, by Victoria Glendinning (1979). Written during the 1940s, about having lived in London during World War II.
• 33.

  Sport and death are the two great socializing factors in Ireland ...

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), Irish author; relocated in England. Bowen's Court, ch. 5 (1942).
  
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• 34.

  Religion engaged her feelings in the hard grapple she knew as love.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), Irish author; born in Ireland. Bowen's Court, ch. 8 (1942). Of Eliza Galwey Bowen, wife of her nineteenth-century forbear, Robert Bowen.
  
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• 35.

  Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. Pictures and Conversations, ch. 1 (1975).
• 36.

  ... fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. From The House in Paris (1936). As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 13, by Victoria Glendinning (1979).
  
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• 37.

  ... I can't see (or feel) the conflict between love and religion. To me they're the same thing.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 13, by Victoria Glendinning (1979). To her lover, the author Charles Ritchie, in the late 1960s.
  
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• 38.

  ... 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 (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. from Why Do I Write? (1948). As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 3, by Victoria Glendinning (1979).
• 39.

  ... often when I write I am trying to make words do the work of line and colour. I have the painter's sensitivity to light. Much (and perhaps the best) of my writing is verbal painting.

  Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 3, by Victoria Glendinning (1979). Written c. 1949.
  
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