Quotes from 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.

Real life seems to have no plots.

A person who can really be called an unselfish person, has no place in life.

Pushing forty? She's hanging on for dear life.

it is in our minds that we live much of our life.

As regards plots I find real life no help at all. Real life seems to have no plots.

We must use words as they are used, or stand aside from life.

Civilized life exacts its toll.

What concerns anyone so much as the time he has to live?

I wonder the human race has been so fond of migrations, when the young take so hardly to traveling.

My youth is escaping without giving me anything it owes me.

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!

People who have power respond simply. They have no minds but their own.

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.

Speaking of things robs them of half their terrors.

People do not like to lose their lives. That is the reason why they should not take other people's.

It is so subtle to write things that have no meaning

Everything is breaking stones, up to a point.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

Things only ferment and fester in the dark.

Well, the English have no family feelings. That is, none of the kind you mean. They have them, and one of them is that relations must cause no expense.

The wrong is never the only thing a wrong-doer has done.

As regards plots 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 real life. But I think there are signs that strange things happen, though they do not emerge

People don't resent having nothing nearly as much as too little.