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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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Ivy Compton-Burnett
Age: 85 †
Born: 1884
Born: June 5
Died: 1969
Died: August 27
Novelist
Writer
London
England
I. Compton-Burnett
Difficult
Writing
Work
Kind
Choice
Choose
Courses
Course
Choices
More quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett
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
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
Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
Magnifying a matter is not the way to mend it.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
it is in our minds that we live much of our life.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?
Ivy Compton-Burnett
People have never lost what they think they have.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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
charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
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
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
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
It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.
Ivy Compton-Burnett
