"Roughly, the action of a character should be unpredictable before it has been shown, inevitable when it has been shown. In the first half of a novel, the unpredictability should be the more striking. In the second half, the inevitability should be the more striking."

--

Source : Elizabeth Bowen (1950). “Collected Impressions”

Elizabeth Bowen

#Character Quotes #Half Quotes #Firsts Quotes

“I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks.”
“It's just all about opportunities, knocking doors down and see who answers.”
“The interesting thing for me is to put together all my influences and all my experiences I got through my traveling with my father.”
“Truth and fiction are so aptly mixed that all seems uniform and of a piece.”
“One has to bear in mind that during my childhood and adolescence, I suffered the repression of the Somoza dictatorship in every way: economically, socially, as well as at the hands of the police -- because if we went out on the street to play baseball, for example, the police would come and beat us up and put us in prison.”
“All poets and story tellers alive today make a single brotherhood; they are engaged in a single work, picturing our human life. Whoever pictures life as he sees it, reassembles in his own way the details of existence which affect him deeply, and so creates a spiritual world of his own.”
“And when it comes to developing the high standards we need, it's time to stop working against our teachers and start working with them. Teachers don't go in to education to get rich. They don't go in to education because they don't believe in their children. They want their children to succeed, but we've got to give them the tools. Invest in early childhood education. Invest in our teachers and our children will succeed.”
“The world can only seem a safe place when we feel safe inside.”

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