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
Family
Discuss
Members
Faces

More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

Image
People's weaker side is not necessarily their truer self.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
The most original novelist now writing in English.
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 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
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
Image
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
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
Image
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?
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
It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
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
There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.
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
There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
There is more difference within the sexes than between them.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
There are different kinds of wrong. The people sinned against are not always the best.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Image
It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.
Ivy Compton-Burnett