Catherine Drinker Bowen Quotes

Colonial America had looked upon (lawyers) as mere tradesmen who earned a questionable living by cleverness and chicanery.

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.

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.

What pioneer ever had chart and a lighthouse to steer by?

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.

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.

One of the marks of true genius is a quality of abundance. A rich, rollicking abundance, enough to give indigestion to ordinary people. Great artists turn it out in rolls, in swatches. They cover whole ceilings with paintings, they chip out a mountainside in stone, they write not one novel but a shelf full. It follows that some of their work is better than other. As much as a third of it may be pretty bad. Shall we say this unevenness is the mark of their humanity - of their proud mortality as well as of their immortality?

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

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

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 grown older.

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

Your concert-goer, though he feed upon symphony as a lamb upon milk, is no true lover if he play no instrument. Your true lover does more than admire the muse; he sweats a little in her service.

All the others arts are lonely. We paint alone
my picture, my interpretation of the sky. My poem, my novel. But in music
ensemble music, not soloism
we share. No altruism this, for we receive tenfold what we give.

I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.

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.