Catherine Drinker Bowen's Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

Will the reader turn the page?

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.

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.

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.