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

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

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.

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

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

I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.

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