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

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
Surface
Use
Charm
Hidden

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.
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
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People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
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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There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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People have never lost what they think they have.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.
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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People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.
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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What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
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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My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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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.
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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To young people the future is still long.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.
Ivy Compton-Burnett