Quotes from Catherine Drinker Bowen

Chamber music - a conversation between friends.

History is, in its essence, exciting; to present it as dull is, to my mind, stark and unforgivable misrepresentation.

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.

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

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

Will the reader turn the page?

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.

Artists often think they are going to die before their time. They seem to possess a heightened sense of the passing of the hours.

Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.

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.

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

Biographers, by their very nature, want to know everything about everybody, dead or alive.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences every thing 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.

In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret's nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come up with the right word.

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 the mirror which waits always before or behind

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