What the writer needs is an empty day ahead.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

What pioneer ever had chart and a lighthouse to steer by?

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist…

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. …

- Catherine Drinker Bowen