Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes

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.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

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.

- 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.

- Catherine Drinker Bowen

Will the reader turn the page?

- Catherine Drinker Bowen