The Death of the Heart Quotes

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Pity the selfishness of lovers: it is brief, a forlorn hope; it is impossible.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The innocent are so few that two of them seldom meet-when they do meet, their victims lie strewn all round.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“It is not our exalted feelings, it is our sentiments that build the necessary home. The need to attach themselves makes wandering people strike roots in a day: wherever we unconsciously feel, we live.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Some people are moulded by their aspirations, others by their hostilities.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The happy passive nature, locked up with itself like a mirror in an airy room, reflects what goes on but demands not to be approached.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Looking back at a repetition of empty days, one sees that monuments have sprung up. Habit is not mere subjugation, it is a tender tie: when one remembers habit it seems to have been happiness.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“It is queer to be in a place when someone has gone. It is not two other places, the place that they were there in, and the place that was there before they came. I can't get used to this third place or to staying behind.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“For people who live on expectations, to face up to their realisation is something of an ordeal. Expectations are the most perilous form of dream, and when dreams do realise themselves it is in the waking world: the difference is subtly but often painfully felt.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The belt slid down her thin hips, and she nervously gripped at it, pulling it up. Short sleeves showed her very thin arms and big delicate elbow joints. Her body was all concave and jerkily fluid lines; it moved with sensitive looseness, loosely threaded together: each movement had a touch of exaggeration , as though some secret power kept springing out.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“There are still places I cannot walk past, though we only walked here those two days. When I walk I look for places we did not go.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“You don't much like anything, do you?"

"No, nothing," said Anna, smiling her nice fat malign smile.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“What I have always found is, anything one keeps hidden should now and then be hidden somewhere else.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“What do you want me to say?"

"I wish you would say something. Our life goes by without any comment.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“You never quite know when you may hope to repair the damage done by going away.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“You and I are enough to break anyone's heart—how can we not break our own?”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Ever since that evening when you gave me my hat, I've been as true to you as I've got it in me to be. Don't force me to where untruth starts. You say nothing would make you hate me. But once make me hate myself and you'd make me hate you.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“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. I haven't wanted to hurt you; I haven't wanted to touch you in any way. When I try and show you the truth I fill you with such despair. Life is so much more impossible than you think.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“There were readers who could expect no more from life, and just dared to look in books to see how much they had missed.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Early in March the crocuses crept alight, then blazed yellow and purple in the park. In fact it is about five o'clock in the evening that the first hour of spring strikes - autumn arrives in the early morning, but spring at the close of a winter day. The air, about to darken, quickens and is run through with mysterious white light; the curtain of darkness is suspended, as though for some unprecedented event. There is perhaps no sunset, the trees are not yet budding - but the senses receive an intimation, an intimation so fine, yet striking in so directly, that this appears a movement in one's own spirit. This exalts whatever feeling is in the heart.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“Experience isn’t interesting till it begins to repeat itself—in fact, till it does that, it hardly is experience”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“The furniture would have missed you?

Furniture's knowing all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don't go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, 'Well, you know a bit more'.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

“As for Thomas, the longer he lived, the less he cared for the world.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart