Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

I knew I was too late—and I was glad something bloodthirsty waited in the wings. For in failing at this, I forfeited any desire to live.

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed...It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality.

Here, therefore, huge and mighty warrior though you be, here shall you die.

I never killed anyone. I avoid going over that edge by writing about a guy who has taken a flying leap over it.

Not even the foulest atrocities of Adolf Hitler ever shocked me so badly as these photographs did.

I want to spit in the face of these badlands.

I didn't want murder. It's all gone wrong.

It is in the nature of things that some people should be unlucky enough to get their heads chopped off.

In my rear view mirror the sun is going down sinking behind bridges in the road and I think of all the good things that we have left undone and I suffer premonitions confirm suspicions of the holocaust to come.

There's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward.

The secret of poetry is cruelty.

Words have to murder reality before they can hold it captive.

I know what the fear is. The fear is not for what is lost. What is lost is already in the wall. What is lost is already behind the locked doors. The fear is for what is still to be lost.

There are black zones of shadow close to our daily paths, and now and then some evil soul breaks a passage through. When that happens, the man who knows must strike before reckoning the consequences.

Let's put it this way - I photograph what interests me all the time. I live with the pictures to see what that thing looks like photographed. I'm saying the same thing; I'm not changing it.

That's what happens when bodies start slapping.

Here is a list of terrible things, The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings The rabid bite of the dogs of war, The voice of one who went before, But most of all the mirror's gaze, Which counts us out our numbered days.

To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.

His bark is worse than his bite.

This world has need of song and sword.

We're going to die," Keith said, the moment he was gone. "This man is a serial killer. We're going to die, and he's going to bury us in his garden and build a shed on us.

We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.

Some crime against nature is about to be committed. I feel it in my veins. These men and boys are grocers and clerks, gardeners and fathers - fathers of small children. A country cannot bear to lose them.

...And, all at once, the moon arouse through the thin ghastly mist, And was crimson in color... And they lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb, came out therefrom. And lay down at the feet of the demon. And looked at him steadily in the face.

By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.