Quote

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

Ivy Compton-Burnett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ivy Compton-Burnett
Age: 85 †
Born: 1884
Born: June 5
Died: 1969
Died: August 27
Novelist
Writer
London
England
I. Compton-Burnett
Members
Faces
Family
Discuss

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Image
What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
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
Image
People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
To young people the future is still long.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
it is in our minds that we live much of our life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
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
Image
As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
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
Image
charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
[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
Image
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