Elizabeth Bowen

“But what a horrible world 'society' is.”

“He feels spikes everywhere and rushes to impale himself.”

“But Miss Pym gave an impression, somehow, of having been attacked from within.”

“She thought she need not worry about her youth; it wasted itself spontaneously, like sunshine elsewhere or firelight in an empty room.”

“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.”

“Makes of men date, like makes of cars...”

“Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.”

“The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached.”

“But surely love wouldn't get so much talked about if there were not something in it?”

“Spezia offered Leopold almost nothing: his precocity devoured itself there, rejecting the steep sunny coast and nibbling blue edge of the sea that had drowned Shelley. His spirit became crustacean under douches of culture and mild philosophic chat from his Uncle Dee, who was cultured rather than erudite.”

“A smell of sandalwood boxes, a kind of glaze on the air from all the chintzes numbed his earthy vitality, he became all ribs and uniform.”

“I swear that each of us keeps, battened down inside himself, a sort of lunatic giant - impossible socially, but full-scale - and that it's the knockings and baterrings we sometimes hear in each other that keeps our intercourse from utter banaility.”

“The restaurant was waning, indifferently relaxing its illusion: for the late-comers a private illusion took its place. Their table seemed to stand on their own carpet; they had a sensation of custom, sedateness, of being inside small walls, as though dining at home again after her journey. She told him about her Mount Morris solitary suppers, in the middle of the library, the rim of the tray just not touching the base of the lamp... the fire behind her back softly falling in on its own ash-no it had not been possible to feel lonely among those feeling things.”

“At Spezia when I am angry I go full of smoke inside, but when you make me angry I see everything.”

“A living dog's better than a dead lion.”

“Their hands, swinging, touched lightly now and then; their nearness was as natural as the June day.”

“You must show him your monkey: I am sure he will like that.”

“When you love someone, all your saved-up wishes start coming out.”

“Writers do not find subjects; subjects find them.”

“Darling, I don't want you; I've got no place for you; I only want what you give. I don't want the whole of anyone.... What you want is the whole of me-isn't it, isn't it?-and the whole of me isn't there for anybody. In that full sense you want me I don't exist.”

“Livvy noted there seemed some communal feeling between the married: any wife could be faintly rude to anyone else's husband.”

“She had one of those charming faces which, according to the angle from which you see them, look either melancholy or impertinent. Her eyes were grey; her trick of narrowing them made her seem to reflect, the greater part of the time, in the dusk of her second thoughts. With that mood, that touch of arriere pensee, went an uncertain, speaking set of lips.”

“Never to lie is to have no lock on your door, you are never wholly alone.”

“Karen, her elbows folded on the deck-rail, wanted to share with someone the pleasure in being alone: this is the paradox of any happy solitude. She had never landed at Cork, so this hill and that hill beyond were as unexpected as pictures at which you say "Oh look!" Nobody was beside her to share the moment, which would have been imperfect with anyone else there.”

“But to be quite oneself one must first waste a little time.”

“I don't know what's come over this place,' Maud stated. 'However, the Lord did, so in despair He showed me what I had better do.' 'And did the Lord suggest your sticking up your father for ten shillings?' 'No, I thought of that,' said Maud, not turning a hair.”

“Solitary and farouche people don't have relationships; they are quite unrelatable.”

“Rich women live at such a distance from life that very often they never see their money — the Queen, they say, for instance, never carries a purse.”

“No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye”

“She walked about with the rather fated expression you see in photographs of girls who have subsequently been murdered, but nothing had so far happened to her.”

“A romantic man often feels more uplifted with two women than with one: his love seems to hit the ideal mark somewhere between two different faces.”

“...there must be something she wanted; and that therefore she was no lady.”

“Reason can never reconcile one to life: nothing allays the wants one cannot explain.”