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The most original novelist now writing in English.

Ivy Compton-Burnett

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Ivy Compton-Burnett
Age: 85 †
Born: 1884
Born: June 5
Died: 1969
Died: August 27
Novelist
Writer
London
England
I. Compton-Burnett
Originals
Original
English
Writing
Novelist
Novelists

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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!
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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it is in our minds that we live much of our life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.
Ivy Compton-Burnett