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

—Elizabeth Bowen

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About Elizabeth Bowen

Portrait of Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen ( BOH-ən; 7 June 1899 – 22 February 1973) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and short story writer notable for her books about "the Big House" of Irish landed Protestants as well as her fiction about life in wartime London.

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Grown-up people seem to be busy by clockwork. . . . They run their unswerving course from object to object, directed by some mysterious inner needle that points all the time to what they must do next. You can only marvel at such misuse of time.

—Elizabeth Bowen

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Autumn arrives in early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day.

—Elizabeth Bowen

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spring winter fall morning autumn

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It is all very well, when the pen flows, but then there are the dark days when imagination deserts one, and it is an effort to put anything down on paper. That little you have achieved stares at you at the end of the day, and you know the next morning you will have to scrape it down and start again.

—Elizabeth Bowen

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art

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Art is one thing that can go on mattering once it has stopped hurting.

—Elizabeth Bowen

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One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.

—Elizabeth Bowen

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knowledge ideas

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