For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realization is something of an ordeal. – Elizabeth Bowen
The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust. – Elizabeth Bowen
The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart. – Elizabeth Bowen
Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain. – Elizabeth Bowen