Elizabeth Bowen, CBE (/ˈboʊən/; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer. Read full biography of Elizabeth Bowen →
Ireland is a great country to die or be married in.
It is not helpful to help a friend by putting coins in his pockets when he has got holes in his pockets.
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.
Nobody speaks the truth when there is something they must have.
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.
Nothing can happen nowhere. The locale of the happening always colours the happening, and often, to a degree, shapes it.
The wish to lead out one's lover must be a tribal feeling; the wish to be seen as loved is part of one's self-respect.
Who is ever adequate? We all create situations each other can't live up to, then break our hearts at them because they don't.
Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.
The importance to the writer of first writing must be out of all proportion of the actual value of what is written.
Meeting people unlike oneself does not enlarge one's outlook; it only confirms one's idea that one is unique.
Experience isn't interesting until it begins to repeat itself. In fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience.
There is no end to the violations committed by children on children, quietly talking alone.
Elizabeth Bowen, CBE (/ˈboʊən/; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer.