Elizabeth Bowen Quotes

for my own purpose, I defined the art of fiction as experience illuminated.

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults.

Fiction is a lie that is told in the service of truth.

As a novelist, I ask of myself only that I tell the truth and that I tell it beautifully.

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

Novels are so interior and idiosyncratic and such a solitary process.

I want to be a part of stories.

Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

I'm excited to bring my characters to life in book form.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

I'm just a story teller.

Fiction is a particular kind of rhetoric, a way of thinking that I think can be useful in your life. It asks you to image the world through someone else's eyes, and it allows you to try to empathize with situations that you haven't actually experienced.

I feel like my brain is more geared towards a novel than it is to a movie.

Like all writers, I draw from life as I know it; but it's a refracted kind of reality, and none of it is factually true.

Only in novels can we take another human being into our head and create something jointly.

My novels are certainly more exciting than my own life.

Kids often ask me if characters are real or made up - and I always tell them, 'I hope they're real but I made them up.'

To tell a good story and to illuminate the world: the two things are completely linked. That is the point. That is what I've always wanted to do.

Writing novels preserves you in a state of innocence - a lot passes you by - simply because your attention is otherwise diverted.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

A novel is a mirror carried along a main road.

I love stories - devising them, writing them, reading them, watching them, being a part of them.