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 βThe 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
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