Catherine Drinker Bowen

“Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.”

“For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.”

“Many a man who has known himself at ten forgets himself utterly between ten and thirty.”

“Will the reader turn the page?”

“Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them.”

“It is a great, a pleasant thing to have a friend with whom to walk, untroubled, through the woods, by the stream, saying nothing, at peace--the heart all clean and quiet and empty, ready for the spirit that may choose to be its guest.”

“If art has a purpose, it is to interpret life, reproduce it in fresh visions.”

“Writing is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living.”

“Writers seldom choose as friends those self-centered characters who are never in trouble, never make mistakes, and always count their change as it is handed to them.”

“I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little more, as I grown older.”

“There is a marvelous turn and trick to British arrogance; its apparent unconsciousness makes it twice as effectual.”

“In writing biography, fact and fiction shouldn't be mixed. And if they are, the fictional points should be printed in red ink, the facts printed in black ink.”