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Proust Has Pointed Out That The Predisposition To Love Creates Its Own Objects; Is This Not Also True Of Fear?
-Elizabeth Bowen
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Proust Has Pointed Out

Elizabeth Bowen
...
Proust Has Pointed Out That The Predisposition To Love Creates Its Own Objects; Is This Not Also True Of Fear?

Understanding the Quote: "proust has pointed out that the predisposition to love creates its own..."

This quote by Elizabeth Bowen reflects deeply on the theme of inspirational. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Inspirational, Courage, Empowerment, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Elizabeth Bowen interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen is celebrated for insightful thoughts on inspirational and courage. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Inspirational
Courage
Empowerment
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With No Banal Reassuring Grown-ups Present, With Grown-up Intervention Taken Away, There Is No Limit To The Terror Strange Children Feel Of Each Other, A Terror Life Obscures But Never Ceases To Justify. There Is No End To The Violations Committed By Children On Children, Quietly Talking Alone.
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... Any Fictionis Bound To Be Transposed Autobiography.
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Autobiography
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Nobody Speaks The Truth When There's Something They Must Have.
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If A Theme Or Idea Is Too Near The Surface, The Novel Becomes Simply A Tract Illustrating An Idea.
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...there Must Be Something She Wanted; And That Therefore She Was No Lady.
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Style Is The Thing That's Always A Bit Phony, And At The Same Time You Cannot Write Without Style.
Writing
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A Bowen, In The First Place, Made Bowen's Court. Since Then, With A Rather Alarming Sureness, Bowen's Court Has Made All The Succeeding Bowens.
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Firsts
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Two Things Are Terrible In Childhood: Helplessness (being In Other People's Power) And Apprehension - The Apprehension That Something Is Being Concealed From Us Because It Is Too Bad To Be Told.
Two
People
Childhood
Nothing Arrives On Paper As It Started, And So Much Arrives That Never Started At All. To Write Is Always To Rave A Little-even If One Did Once Know What One Meant
Writing
Paper
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The Slight Sense Of Degeneracy Induced By Reading Novels Before Luncheon
Reading
Reading Novels
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Experience Isn't Interesting Until It Begins To Repeat Itself. In Fact, Till It Does That, It Hardly Is Experience.
Interesting
Understanding
Experience
The Child Lives In The Book; But Just As Much The Book Lives In The Child.
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Princess Bibesco Delighted In A Semi-ideal World - A World Which, Though Having A Counterpart In Her Experience, Was To A Great Extent Brought Into Being By Her Own Temperament And, One Might Say, Flair.
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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.
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Good General-purpose Manners Nowadays May Be Said To Consist In Knowing How Much You Can Get Away With.
Knowing
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Wariness Had Driven Away Poetry; From Hesitating To Feel Came The Moment When You No Longer Could.
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Driven
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Home
Emotions Feelings
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Pity The Selfishness Of Lovers: It Is Brief, A Forlorn Hope; It Is Impossible.
Love
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All My Life I Have Said, "whatever Happens There Will Always Be Tables And Chairs"--and What A Mistake.
War
Mistake
Tables And Chairs
With Three Or More People There Is Something Bold In The Air: Direct Things Get Said Which Would Frighten Two People Alone And Conscious Of Each Inch Of Their Nearness To One Another. To Be Three Is To Be In Public - You Feel Safe.
Relationship
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Silences Have A Climax, When You Have Got To Speak.
Silence
Speak
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I Am Dead Against Art's Being Self-expression. I See An Inherent Failure In Any Story Which Fails To Detach Itself From The Author-detach Itself In The Sense That A Well-blown Soap-bubble Detaches Itself From The Bowl Of The Blower's Pipe And Spherically Takes Off Into The Air As A New, Whole, Pure, Iridescent World. Whereas The Ill-blown Bubble, As Children Know, Timidly Adheres To The Bowl's Lip, Then Either Bursts Or Sinks Flatly Back Again.
Art
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Air
The Most Striking Fault In Work By Young Or Beginning Novelists, Submitted For Criticism, Is Irrelevance--due Either To Infatuation Or Indecision. To Direct Such An Author's Attention To The Imperative Of Relevance Is Certainly The Most Useful--and Possibly The Only--help That Can Be Given.
Irrelevance
Criticism
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The Novelist's--any Writer's--object Is To Whittle Down His Meaning To The Exactest And Finest Possible Point. What, Of Course, Isfatal Is When He Does Not Know What He Does Mean: He Has No Point To Sharpen.
Mean
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Sacrificers Are Not The Ones To Pity. The Ones To Pity Are Those They Sacrifice.
Sacrifice
Pity
Disappointment Tears The Bearable Film Off Life.
Disappointment
Tears
Film
Silences Can Be As Different As Sounds.
Silence
Sound
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Lying
Writing
Novelists
Illusions Are Art, For The Feeling Person, And It Is By Art That We Live, If We Do.
Art
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Literature
Art Is For [the Irish] Inseparable From Artifice: Of That, The Theatre Is The Home. Possibly, It Was England Made Me A Novelist.
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Passion
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Life
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She Had One Of Those Charming Faces Which, According To The Angle From Which You See Them, Look Either Melancholy Or Impertinent. Her Eyes Were Grey; Her Trick Of Narrowing Them Made Her Seem To Reflect, The Greater Part Of The Time, In The Dusk Of Her Second Thoughts. With That Mood, That Touch Of Arriere Pensee, Went An Uncertain, Speaking Set Of Lips.
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Difficulty
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States
Subjects
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I Am Fully Intelligent Only When I Write. I Have A Certain Amount Of Small-change Intelligence, Which I Carry Round With Me As, At Any Rate In A Town, One Has To Carry Small Money, For The Needs Of The Day, The Non-writing Day. But It Seems To Me I Seldom Purely Think ... If I Thought More I Might Write Less.
Writing
Intelligent
Thinking
... Artists Were Intended To Be An Ornament To Society. As A Society In Themselves They Are Unthinkable.
Artist
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What's The Matter With This Country Is The Matter With The Lot Of Us Individually - Our Sense Of Personality Is A Sense Of Outrage.
Country
Personality
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There Is No Doubt That Sorrow Brings One Down In The World. The Aristocratic Privilege Of Silence Belongs, You Soon Find Out, To Only The Happy State- Or, At Least, To The State When Pain Keeps Within Bounds.
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Yes, Writing A Novel, My Boy, Is Like Driving Pigs To Market - You Have One Of Them Making A Bolt Down The Wrong Lane; Another Won't Get Over The Right Stile.
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Ghosts Seem Harder To Please Than We Are; It Is As Though They Haunted For Haunting’s Sake -- Much As We Relive, Brood, And Smoulder Over Our Pasts.
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My Writing, I Am Prepared To Think, May Be A Substitute For Something I Have Been Born Without - A So-called Normal Relation To Society. My Books Are My Relation To Society.
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Autumn Arrives In The Early Morning.
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... It Appears To Me That Problems, Inherent In Any Writing, Loom Unduly Large When One Looks Ahead. Though Nothing Is Easy, Little Is Quite Impossible.
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Looks
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Conformity
Restful
Somehow At Parties At Which One Stays Standing Up One Seems To Require To Be More Concentratedly Intelligent Than One Does At Those At Which One Can Sit Down.
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On The Subject Of Dress Almost No One, For One Or Another Reason, Feels Truly Indifferent: If Their Own Clothes Do Not Concern Them, Somebody Else's Do.
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I Know That I Have In My Make-up Layers Of Synthetic Experiences, And That The Most Powerful Of My Memories Are Only Half True.
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Powerful
Half
Also, Perhaps Children Are Sterner Than Grown-up People In Their Refusal To Suffer, In Their Refusal, Even, To Feel At All.
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People
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Dialogue Is The Ideal Means Of Showing What Is Between The Characters. It Crystallizes Relationships. It Should, Ideally, Be So Effective As To Make Analysis Or Explanation Of The Relationships Between The Characters Unnecessary.
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Mean
Solitary And Farouche People Don't Have Relationships; They Are Quite Unrelatable. If You And I Were Capable Of Being Altogether House-trained And Made Jolly, We Should Be Nicer People, But Not Writers.
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House
Solitude
The Paradox Of Romantic Love -- That What One Possesses, One Can No Longer Desire -- Was At Work.
Romantic Love
Desire
Paradox
We Are Minor In Everything But Our Passions.
Passion
Literature
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She Walked About With The Rather Fated Expression You See In Photographs Of Girls Who Have Subsequently Been Murdered, But Nothing Had So Far Happened To Her.
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Expression
Photograph
To The Sun Rome Owes Its Underlying Glow, And Its Air Called Golden - To Me, More The Yellow Of White Wine; Like Wine It Raises Agreeability To Poetry.
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Air
Rome
Characters Should On The Whole, Be Under Rather Than Over Articulate. What They Intend To Say Should Be More Evident, More Striking (because Of Its Greater Inner Importance To The Plot) Than What They Arrive At Saying.
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One's Sentiments -- Call Them That -- One's Fidelities Are So Instinctive That One Hardly Knows They Exist: Only When They Are Betrayed Or, Worse Still, When One Betrays Them Does One Realize Their Power.
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Eden
Picnics
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Leap
Autumn Arrives In Early Morning, But Spring At The Close Of A Winter Day.
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Time
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The Heart May Think It Knows Better: The Senses Know That Absence Blots People Out. We Really Have No Absent Friends.
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Heart
Thinking
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Character
Unique
A Romantic Man Often Feels More Uplifted With Two Women Than With One: His Love Seems To Hit The Ideal Mark Somewhere Between Two Different Faces.
Men
Two
Different Faces
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Passion
May
Habit
But Complex People Are Never Certain That They Are Not Crooks, Never Certain Their Passports Are Quite In Order, And Are, Therefore, Unnerved By The Slightest Thing.
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People
Crooks
The Process Of Reading Is Reciprocal; The Book Is No More Than A Formula, To Be Furnished Out With Images Out Of The Reader's Mind.
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Reading
Mind
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Change
Imagination
Chance
Habit Is Not Mere Subjugation, It Is A Tender Tie; When One Remembers Habit It Seems To Have Been Happiness.
Ties
Remember
Tradition
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Hope
Expectations
Desperation
The Silence Of A Shut Park Does Not Sound Like Country Silence: It Is Tense And Confined.
Country
Nature
Silence
Chance Is Better Than Choice; It Is More Lordly. Chance Is God, Choice Is Man.
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Choices
Luck
[a Writer] Should Try Not To Be Too Far, Personally, Below The Level Of His Work.
Trying
Levels
Should
The Importance To The Writer Of First Writing Must Be Out Of All Proportion Of The Actual Value Of What Is Written.
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Literature
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Change
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Succession
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Character
Meetings
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Void
Dangerous
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Expectations
Realization
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Two
People
We Have Really No Absent Friends.
Absence
Absent Friends
Absent
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Ideas
Roots
May
Sport And Death Are The Two Great Socializing Factors In Ireland.
Sports
Two
Ireland
That Is Partly Why Women Marry - To Keep Up The Fiction Of Being In The Hub Of Things.
Fiction
Hub
Karen, Her Elbows Folded On The Deck-rail, Wanted To Share With Someone The Pleasure In Being Alone: This Is The Paradox Of Any Happy Solitude. She Had Never Landed At Cork, So This Hill And That Hill Beyond Were As Unexpected As Pictures At Which You Say "oh Look!" Nobody Was Beside Her To Share The Moment, Which Would Have Been Imperfect With Anyone Else There.
Solitude
Looks
Elbows
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Character
Half
Firsts
... In Nine Out Of Ten Cases The Original Wish To Write Is The Wish To Make Oneself Felt[ellipsis In Source] The Non-essential Writer Never Gets Past That Wish.
Writing
Past
Wish
What Is A Novel? I Say: An Invented Story. At The Same Time A Story Which, Though Invented Has The Power To Ring True. True To What? True To Life As The Reader Knows Life To Be Or, It May Be, Feels Life To Be. And I Mean The Adult, The Grown-up Reader. Such A Reader Has Outgrown Fairy Tales, And We Do Not Want The Fantastic And The Impossible. So I Say To You That A Novel Must Stand Up To The Adult Tests Of Reality.
Truth
Mean
Reality
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Eye
Vision
Mysterious
People In Love, In Whom Every Sense Is Open, Cannot Beat Off The Influence Of A Place.
People
Influence
Beats
It Is Not Helpful To Help A Friend By Putting Coins In His Pockets When He Has Got Holes In His Pockets.
Friendship
Inspiration
Pockets
All Your Youth You Want To Have Your Greatness Taken For Granted; When You Find It Taken For Granted, You Are Unnerved.
Taken
Greatness
Want
Nothing, That Is Say No One, Can Be Such An Inexorable Tour-conductor As One's Own Conscience Or Sense Of Duty, If One Allows Either The Upper Hand: The Self-bullying That Goes On In The Name Of Sight-seeing Is Grievous.
Bullying
Travel
Sight
First Love, With Its Frantic Haughty Imagination, Swings Its Object Clear Of The Everyday, Over The Rut Of Living, Making Him All Looks, Silences, Gestures, Attitudes, A Burning Phrase With No Context.
Attitude
First Love
Teenage Love
We Desert Those Who Desert Us; We Cannot Afford To Suffer; We Must Live How We Can.
Survival
Suffering
Desert
The Story Must Spring From An Impression Or Perception Pressing Enough To Have Made The Writer Write. It Should Magnetize The Imagination And Give Pleasure.
Spring
Writing
Giving
This, My First [bicycle] Had An Intrinsic Beauty. And It Opened For Me An Era Of All But Flying, Which Roads Emptily Crossing Theairy, Gold-gorsy Common Enhanced. Nothing Since Has Equalled That Birdlike Freedom.
Freedom
Flying
Gold
Nothing Can Happen Nowhere. The Locale Of The Happening Always Colours The Happening, And Often, To A Degree, Shapes It.
Degrees
Literature
Shapes
The Innocent Are So Few That Two Of Them Seldom Meet - When They Do Meet, Their Victims Lie Strewn All Round.
Lying
Two
Literature
Not Only Is There No Question Of Solitude, But In The Long Run We May Not Choose Our Company.
Running
Loneliness
Long
Exhibitionism And A Nervous Wish For Concealment, For Anonymity, Thus Battle Inside The Buyer Of Any Piece Of Clothing.
Clothes
Wish
Battle
Darling, I Don't Want You; I've Got No Place For You; I Only Want What You Give. I Don't Want The Whole Of Anyone.... What You Want Is The Whole Of Me-isn't It, Isn't It?-and The Whole Of Me Isn't There For Anybody. In That Full Sense You Want Me I Don't Exist.
Giving
Want
Darling
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.
Heart
Thinking
People
The Best That An Individual Can Do Is To Concentrate On What He Or She Can Do, In The Course Of A Burning Effort To Do It Better.
Effort
Burning
Individual
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Real
Writing
Spontaneity
Ghosts, We Hope, May Be Always With Us - That Is, Never Too Far Out Of The Reach Of Fancy. On The Whole, It Would Seem They Adapt Themselves Well, Perhaps Better Than We Do, To Changing World Conditions - They Enlarge Their Domain, Shift Their Hold On Our Nerves, And, Dispossessed Of One Habitat, Set Up House In Another. The Universal Battiness Of Our Century Looks Like Providing Them With A Propitious Climate.
House
World
May
There Is No End To The Violations Committed By Children On Children, Quietly Talking Alone.
Children
Talking
Literature
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Air
Important
Guarantees
Ireland Is A Great Country To Die Or Be Married In.
Country
Literature
Married
Makes Of Men Date, Like Makes Of Car.
Men
Car
But In General, For The Purposes Of Most Novelists, The Number Of Objects Genuinely Necessary For. . .describing A Scene Will Be Found To Be Very Small.
Numbers
Novelists
Purpose
Memory Is To Love What The Saucer Is To The Cup.
Memories
Cups
I Pity People Who Do Not Care For Society. They Are Poorer For The Oblation They Do Not Make.
People
Care
Pity
The Irish Landowner, Partly From Laziness But Also From An Indifferent Delicacy, Does Not Interfere In The Lives Of The People Round. Sport And Death Are The Two Great Socializing Factors In Ireland, But These Cannot Operate The Whole Time: On The Whole, The Landowner Leaves His Tenants And Work-people To Make Their Own Mistakes, While He Makes His.
Sports
Mistake
Two
... In General, The Anglo-irish Do Not Make Good Dancers; They Are Too Spritely And Conscious; They Are Incapable Of One Kind Of Trance Or Of Being Seemingly Impersonal. And, For The Formal, Pure Dance They Lack The Formality: About Their Stylishness (for They Have Stylishness) There Is Something Impromptu, Slightly Disorderly.
Dance
Kind
Conscious
Language Is A Mixture Of Statement And Evocation.
Mixtures
Language
Statements
Who Is Ever Adequate? We All Create Situations Each Other Can't Live Up To, Then Break Our Hearts At Them Because They Don't.
Break Up
Heart
Adequate
Only In A House Where One Has Learnt To Be Lonely Does One Have This Solicitude For Things. One's Relation To Them, The Daily Seeing Or Touching, Begins To Become Love, And To Lay One Open To Pain.
Love
Lonely
Pain
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Fate
Destiny
Eagles
The Passion Of Vanity Has Its Own Depths In The Spirit, And Is Powerfully Militant.
Passion
Vanity
Depth
Though Not All Reading Children Grow Up To Be Writers, I Take It That Most Creative Writers Must In Their Day Have Been Reading Children.
Children
Growing Up
Book
We Can Surmount The Anger We Feel. To Find Oneself Like A Young Tree Inside A Tomb Is To Discover The Power To Crack The Tomb And Grow Up To Any Height.
Growing Up
Anger
Tree
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Self
Stimulus
Chosen
Fantasy Is Toxic: The Private Cruelty And The World War Both Have Their Start In The Heated Brain.
War
Brain
Toxic
When You Love Someone All Your Saved Up Wishes Start Coming Out.
Love
Relationship
Crush
Without Fiction, Either Life Would Be Insufficient Or The Winds From The North Would Blow Too Cold.
Book
Blow
Wind
... Into The Novel Goes Such Taste As I Have For Rational Behaviour And Social Portraiture. The Short Story, As I See It To Be, Allows For What Is Crazy About Humanity: Obstinacies, Inordinate Heroisms, "immortal Longings.
Crazy
Humanity
Taste
No One Of The Characters In My Novels Has Originated, So Far As I Know, In Real Life. If Anything, The Contrary Was The Case: Persons Playing A Part In My Life--the First Twenty Years Of It--had About Them Something Semi-fictitious.
Real
Character
Years
I Became, And Remain, My Characters' Close And Intent Watcher: Their Director, Never. Their Creator I Cannot Feel That I Was, Or Am.
Character
Directors
Literature
... A Novel Survives Because Of Its Basic Truthfulness, Its Having Within It Something General And Universal, And A Quality Of Imaginative Perception Which Applies Just As Much Now As It Did In The Fifty Or Hundred Or Two Hundred Years Since The Novel Came To Life.
Truth
Years
Two
Often When I Write I Am Trying To Make Words Do The Work Of Line And Color. I Have The Painter's Sensitivity To Light. Much Of My Writing Is Verbal Painting.
Writing
Light
Color
At The Age Of Twelve I Was Finding The World Too Small: It Appeared To Me Like A Dull, Trim Back Garden, In Which Only Trivial Games Could Be Played.
Garden
Games
Childhood
Almost Everyone Admits To Hunger During The Opera.... Hunger Is So Exalting That During A Last Act You Practically Levitate.
Opera
Lasts
Hunger
Sacrificers ... Are Not The Ones To Pity. The Ones To Pity Are Those That They Sacrifice. Oh, The Sacrificers, They Get It Both Ways. A Person Knows Themselves That They're Able To Do Without.
Sacrifice
Able
Way
... Love Dreads Being Isolated, Being Left To Speak In A Void -- At The Beginning It Would Often Rather Listen Than Speak.
Void
Speak
Dread
Intimacies Between Women Often Go Backwards, Beginning In Revelations And Ending In Small Talk.
Women
Literature
Intimacy
Young Girls Like The Excess Of Any Quality. Without Knowing, They Want To Suffer, To Suffer They Must Exaggerate; They Like To Have Loud Chords Struck On Them.
Girl
Luxury
Knowing
Plot Is The Knowing Of Destination.
Knowing
Plot
Destination
Fashion Seems To Exist For An Abstract Person Who Is Not You Or Me.
Fashion
Abstract
Persons
Good-byes Breed A Sort Of Distaste For Whomever You Say Good-bye To; This Hurts, You Feel, This Must Not Happen Again.
Inspirational
Goodbye
Hurt
Meeting People Unlike Oneself Does Not Enlarge One's Outlook; It Only Confirms One's Idea That One Is Unique.
Unique
Ideas
People
Each Of Us Keeps, Battened Down Inside Himself, A Sort Of Lunatic Giant; Impossible Socially, But Full Scale; And It's The Knockings And Battering We Sometimes Hear In Each Other That Keep Our Banter From Utter Banality.
Depression
Giants
Impossible
Nobody Can Be Kinder Than The Narcissist While You React To Life In His Own Terms.
Life
Conceited
Narcissism
Education Is Not So Important As People Think.
Thinking
People
Important
I Do Like Italian Graves; They Look So Much More Lived In.
Italian
Looks
Graves
Curiosity In Rome Is A Form Of Courtesy.
Rome
Curiosity
Courtesy
It Is In This Unearthly First Hour Of Spring Twilight That Earth's Almost Agonized Livingness Is Most Felt. This Hour Is So Dreadful To Some People That They Hurry Indoors And Turn On The Lights.
Spring
Twilight
People
Certain Books Come To Meet Me, As Do People.
Book
Reading
People
Dialogue Should Show The Relationships Among People.
Writing
People
Should
Almost Everybody Wore A Curious Limpidity Of Expression, Like Newborn Babies Or Souls Just After Death. Dazed But Curiously Dignified.... After A Criseof Hysterical Revulsion And Tiredness, I Passed Beyondand Became Entered By A Rather Sublime Feeling.
Baby
Peace
War
Never To Lie Is To Have No Lock On Your Door, You Are Never Wholly Alone.
Lying
Doors
Locks
In My Experience One Thing You Don't Learn From Is Anything Anyone Set Up To Be A Lesson; What You Are To Know You Pick Up As You Go Along.
Learning
Growth
Lessons
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.
Live In The Moment
Stories
Tiny
I Suspect Victims; They Win In The Long Run.
Running
Winning
Long
Have Not All Poetic Truths Been Already Stated? The Essence Of A Poetic Truth Is That No Statement Of It Can Be Final.
Essence
Finals
Poetic
The Wish To Lead Out One's Lover Must Be A Tribal Feeling; The Wish To Be Seen As Loved Is Part Of One's Self-respect.
Respect
Self
Feelings
But Surely Love Wouldn't Get So Much Talked About If There Were Not Something In It?
Love
Ifs
When One Is A Child, The Disposition Of Objects, Tables And Chairs And Doors, Seems Part Of The Natural Order: A House-move Lets In Chaos - As It Does For A Dog.
Dog
Children
Moving
Children Like Change - For One Thing, They Never Anticipate Regret.
Children
Regret
Anticipate
Art Is One Thing That Can Go On Mattering Once It Has Stopped Hurting.
Art
Hurt
Memorable
Every Short Story Is An Experiment - What One Must Ask Is Not Only, Did It Come Off, But Was It, As An Experiment, Worth Making?
Stories
Short Story
Experiments
Jealousy Is No More Than Feeling Alone Against Smiling Enemies.
Jealousy
Loneliness
Envy
Memory Must Be Patchy; What Is More Alarming Is Its Face-savingness. Something In One Shrinks From Catching It Out - Unique To Oneself, One's Own, One's Claim To Identity, It Implicates One's Identity In Its Fibbing.
Memories
Unique
Identity
Solitary And Farouche People Don't Have Relationships; They Are Quite Unrelatable.
People
Solitary
Mechanical Difficulties With Language Are The Outcome Of Internal Difficulties With Thought.
Literature
Outcomes
Language
Each Piece Of Dialogue Must Be "something Happening". . .the "amusing" For Its Own Sake Should Above All Be Censored. . .the Functional Use Of Dialogue For The Plot Must Be The First Thing In The Writer's Mind. Where Functional Usefulness Cannot Be Established, Dialogue Must Be Left Out.
Mind
Pieces
Sake
Writers Do Not Find Subjects; Subjects Find Them.
Subjects
Knowledge Of Rome Must Be Physical, Sweated Into The System, Worked Up Into The Brain Through The Thinning Shoe-leather. ... When It Comes To Knowing, The Senses Are More Honest Than The Intelligence. Nothing Is More Real Than The First Wall You Lean Up Against Sobbing With Exhaustion. Rome No More Than Beheld (that Is, Taken In Through The Eyes Only) Could Still Be A Masterpiece In Cardboard - The Eye I Suppose Being Of All The Organs The Most Easily Infatuated And Then Jaded And So Tricked. Seeing Is Pleasure, But Not Knowledge.
Travel
Wall
Real
The Short Story Is At An Advantage Over The Novel, And Can Claim Its Nearer Kinship To Poetry, Because It Must Be More Concentrated, Can Be More Visionary, And Is Not Weighed Down (as The Novel Is Bound To Be) By Facts, Explanation, Or Analysis. I Do Not Mean To Say That The Short Story Is By Any Means Exempt From The Laws Of Narrative: It Must Observe Them, But On Its Own Terms.
Mean
Law
Narrative
I Think The Main Thing, Don't You, Is To Keep The Show On The Road.
Thinking
Literature
Shows
Raids Are Slightly Constipating.
I Can't See Or Feel The Conflict Between Love And Religion. To Me, They're The Same Thing.
Conflict
Feels
I Can
To Walk Into History Is To Be Free At Once, To Be At Large Among People.
People
History
Walks
Dialogue In Fiction Is What Characters Do To One Another.
Character
Fiction
Crafts
Forgiveness Should Be An Act, But This Is A State With Him.
Forgiveness
States
Should
Someone Soon To Start On A Journey Is Always A Little Holy.
Travel
Journey
Littles
Short Of A Small Range Of Physical Acts-a Fight, Murder, Lovemaking-dialogue Is The Most Vigorous And Visible Inter-action Of Which Characters In A Novel Are Capable. Speech Is What Characters Do To Each Other.
Writing
Character
Fighting
Some People Are Molded By Their Admirations, Others By Their Hostilities.
Character
People
Personality
Convention Was Our Safeguard: Could One Have Stronger?
Stronger
Conventions
Reason Can Never Reconcile One To Life: Nothing Allays The Wants One Cannot Explain.
Want
Reason
Reconcile
In 'real Life' Everything Is Diluted; In The Novel Everything Is Condensed.
Real
Real Life
Novel
Sins Cut Boldly Up Through Every Class In Society, But Mere Misdemeanours Show A Certain Level In Life.
Short Life
Cutting
Class
Revenge Was A Very Wild Kind Of Justice.
Revenge
Justice
Kind
The Writer, Unlike His Non-writing Adult Friend, Has No Predisposed Outlook; He Seldom Observes Deliberately. He Sees What He Didnot Intend To See; He Remembers What Does Not Seem Wholly Possible. Inattentive Learner In The Schoolroom Of Life, He Keeps Some Faculty Free To Veer And Wander. His Is The Roving Eye.
Eye
Writing
Adults
Where Would The Irish Be Without Someone To Be Irish At?
...though One Can Be Callous In Ireland One Cannot Be Wholly Opaque Or Material. An Unearthly Disturbance Works In The Spirit; Reason Can Never Reconcile One To Life; Nothing Allays The Wants One Cannot Explain.
Opaque
Want
Spirit
Don't You Understand That All Language Is Dead Currency? How They Keep On Playing Shop With It All The Same.
Language
Currency
Shops
One Can Suffer A Convulsion Of One's Entire Nature, And, Unless It Makes Some Noise, No One Notices. It's Not Just That We Are Incurious; We Completely Lack Any Sense Of Each Other's Existences.
Suffering
Noise
Indifference
Temperamentally, The Writer Exists On Happenings, On Contacts, Conflicts, Action And Reaction, Speed, Pressure, Tension. Were He Acontemplative Purely, He Would Not Write.
Writing
Thoughtful
Thinking
The Novel Does Not Simply Recount Experience, It Adds To Experience.
Doe
Add
Novel
[my Early Stories] Are The Work Of A Living Writer Whom I Know In A Sense, But Can Never Meet.
Fiction
Stories
Knows
Characters Are Not Created By Writers. They Pre-exist And Have To Be Found.
Character
Found
Silence Sat In The Taxi, As Though A Stranger Had Got In.
Silence
Stranger
Taxi
Mr. [aldous] Huxley Has Been The Alarming Young Man For A Long Time, A Sort Of Perpetual Clever Nephew Who Can Be Relied On To Flutter The Lunch Party. Whatever Will He Say Next? How Does He Think Of Those Things? He Has Been Deplored Once Or Twice, But Feeling Is In His Favor: He Is Steadily Read. He Is At Once The Truly Clever Person And The Stupid Person's Idea Of The Clever Person; He Is Expected To Be Relentless, To Administer Intellectual Shocks.
Clever
Stupid
Party
Dogs Are A Habit, I Think.
Funny
Dog
Thinking
Childish Fantasy, Like The Sheath Over The Bud, Not Only Protects But Curbs The Terrible Budding Spirit, Protects Not Only Innocence From The World, But The World From The Power Of Innocence.
Bud
World
Spirit
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