No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.
Elizabeth BowenRead
When I read a story, I relive the moment from which it sprang. A scene burned itself into me, a building magnetized me, a mood orseason of Nature's penetrated me, history suddenly appeared to me in some tiny act, or a face had begun to haunt me before I glanced at it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote expresses how stories and experiences can deeply impact and resonate with a person.
In this quote, Elizabeth Bowen reflects on the profound connection between readers and the stories they encounter. She describes how a story can evoke vivid memories and emotions, transforming the act of reading into a deeply personal experience where each scene and detail leaves a lasting impression on the reader's psyche.
Themes
StoryReadingImpressionMemoryEmotionNature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during a book club meeting to emphasize the emotional impact of literature.
More from Elizabeth Bowen
All quotes →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 BowenRead
Dialogue must appear realistic without being so. Actual realism-the lifting, as it were, of passages from a stenographer's take-down of a 'real life' conversation-would be disruptive. Of what? Of the illusion of the novel. In 'real life' everything is diluted; in the novel everything is condensed.
Elizabeth BowenRead
Habit, of which passion must be wary, may all the same be the sweetest part of love.
Elizabeth BowenRead
The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him--a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured--captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought.
Elizabeth BowenRead
One can live in the shadow of an idea without grasping it.
Elizabeth BowenRead
Similar quotes
I do most of the cooking in my head.
Alain DucasseRead
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Gore VidalRead
When I was a little boy, I was reading Dante and I was saying to myself 'Bravo, Dante, Bravo.' It's so beautiful, the music, the sound, the meaning. I felt like calling him by phone, like a friend.
Roberto BenigniRead
Not every song I write is ecstasy. And it can happen only one time. After that, when you sing the same melody and words, it's pleasure, but you don't get wiped out.
Paul SimonRead
While all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.
Marcel DuchampRead
I'll go to the movies and hear 'Angel From Montgomery' in some film, and nobody ever even told me about it. They don't tell you your stuff is going to be in a movie. They don't have to, so they don't tell you. You get paid eventually.
John PrineRead