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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the importance of crafting dialogue in literature to create a believable narrative, as true-to-life conversations can disrupt the artistic illusion of a novel.
Elizabeth Bowen discusses the art of dialogue in novels, asserting that while realism in dialogue may reflect actual speech, it can actually undermine the crafted illusion of narrative. In contrast to the diluted nature of real-life conversations, a novel's dialogue is meant to be condensed, focused, and carefully constructed to enhance the storytelling and overall impact on the reader.
Themes
DialogueRealismNovelIllusionArtistic Expression
In practice
Example use cases
In a writing workshop, a participant shares this quote to highlight the importance of crafted dialogue.
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
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.
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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