Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

As regards plot I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots. And as I think a plot desirable and almost necessary, I have this extra grudge against life.

it is in our minds that we live much of our life.

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.

As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.

We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.

Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.

Civilized life exacts its toll.

It is not for us to hold ourselves above the position of grateful people. We have to be able to accept. Anything else shows an unwillingness to grant someone else the superior place.

My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.

People have never lost what they think they have.

Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.

A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.

[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.

We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.

Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

Real charity and real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

Never is a long word.

It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.

Real life seems to have no plots.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

some people always have a touch of youth about them.

To young people the future is still long.

I think I feel on the whole that something's there trying to get out ... It's sort of trying to get out and wants help.

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.

You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.

Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.

The plot is not very important to me, though a novel must have one, of course. It's just a line to hang the washing on.

We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.

Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.

I never know why self-sacrifice is noble. Why is it better to sacrifice oneself than someone else?

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.

Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.

I wonder the human race has been so fond of migrations, when the young take so hardly to traveling.

A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.

I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth,' said his cousin. 'But we seem to have no other.

What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?

Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.

People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.

We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.

If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.

There is danger in courage. Cowardice is a power for good. We hardly know what it prevents.

There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.

People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.

Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.