Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

I've made more mistakes than anyone I know. Sometimes I learned something, and sometimes I just find myself doing it again. It makes me mad when I wasn't smart enough to learn the first time. You just think it's going to be different the next time, and it's not, as it turns out.

Every time I try to plan something or assume that something's going to happen, it never works out like that.

In my experience, previously counted chickens never do hatch.

And that was it. All this buildup to a great leap, and I didn't fall or fly. Instead I found myself back on the edge of the cliff, blinking, wondering if I'd ever jumped at all. It's not supposed to be like this.

I went whale watching once. It was very similar to watching people on a boat become disappointed.

All I wanted to do was be a hero... But do I ever get to be a hero? All I ever get to be is the stupid goat!" "Don't be discouraged, Charlie Brown... In this life we live, there are always some bitter pills to be swallowed..." "If it's all the same with you, I'd rather not renew my perscription!

How my achievements mock me!

Nothing was quite like it was supposed to be.

Dreams without goals, are just dreams and they ultimately fuel disappointment.

The road to someday leads to a town of nowhere.

Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.

Promising a revolution that’s simply not feasible really does have the potential to create cynicism when a couple of years go by and it hasn’t happened.

That didn’t happen, of course. Things never happened the way I imagined them.

I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult.

Watching him was like opening the door to a siniging telegram; you know it's supposed to be entertaining, but you can't get beyond the sad fact that this person actually thinks he bringing some joy into your life. Somewhere he had a mother who sifted through a shoe box of mimeographed playbills, pouring herself another drink and wondering when her son would come to his senses and swallow some drain cleaner.

I think for a long time, I was paralyzed by some of my hopes and ideals for what my life was going to be like. I had this perfect vision of how my life should go, but it seemed - it was - impossible to realize, so I sat around for a long, long time doing almost nothing at all.

To come so far, to lose so much and to find nothing. -Jing-mei

It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times.

Beautiful loser, where you gonna fall? When you realize, you just can't have it all.

The person who makes promises to everyone ultimately pleases no one.

To have slaved so many years for nothing!

People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.

It was the momentary yielding of a nature that had been disappointed from the dawn of its perceptions, but had not quite given up all its hopeful yearnings yet.

I may not be old but I’m too old to have this much nothing