Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

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

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

Some people always have a touch of youth about them.

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

Well, Buttermere, this is a day that is good to live and breathe in, that makes a man feel in his prime. Standing here in front of my house, I feel as young as when I moved into it thirty years ago, in the year eighteen hundred and fifty-nine. What aged man would you take me to be, as I step as it were casually into your view?

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

There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.

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

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

It is so subtle to write things that have no meaning

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

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

Well, the English have no family feelings. That is, none of the kind you mean. They have them, and one of them is that relations must cause no expense.

Never is a long word.

We are always children to our mothers.

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

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

To young people the future is still long.

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

The wrong is never the only thing a wrong-doer has done.

Speaking of things robs them of half their terrors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.

Charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.

Time 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.

People do not like to lose their lives. That is the reason why they should not take other people's.

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

Everything is breaking stones, up to a point.

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

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.

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

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

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

People have never lost what they think they have.

When I die, people will say it is the best thing for me. It is because they know it is the worst. They want to avoid the feeling of pity. As though they were the people most concerned!

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

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

The most original novelist now writing in English.

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

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

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.