Elizabeth Bowen - Day Quotes

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It is about five o'clock in an evening that the first hour of spring strikes—autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

Elizabeth Bowen
'You certainly are not yourself to-day.' 'I so seldom am,' said Cecilia.

Elizabeth Bowen
Though not all reading children grow up to be writers, I take it that most creative writers must in their day have been reading children.

Elizabeth Bowen
Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.

Elizabeth Bowen
The straight sunny tombstones looked sociable, fresh wreaths were laid on the breasts of the graves. You could almost see the dead sitting up holding their flowers, like invalids on a visiting-day, waiting to hear the music. Only the very new dead, under raw earth with no tombstones, lay flat in despair.

Elizabeth Bowen
I am fully intelligent only when I write. I have a certain amount of small-change intelligence, which I carry round with me as, at any rate in a town, one has to carry small money, for the needs of the day, the non-writing day. But it seems to me I seldom purely think... if I thought more I might write less.

Elizabeth Bowen
History is not a book, arbitrarily divided into chapters, or a drama chopped into separate acts; it has flowed forward. Rome is a continuity, called 'eternal.' What has accumulated in this place acts on everyone, day and night, like an extra climate.

Elizabeth Bowen