"Everybody expects the fairy tale - you're going to be together forever with somebody. I don't really subscribe to that. I'd love that to happen if that happened, but ten years is enough. Ten years is a good thing with somebody, I think. It's a nice thing. A lot of good love can happen in ten years."

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What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.

— Elizabeth Bowen