76 Quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett

It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.

It is no good to think that other people are out to serve our interests.

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

I never agree with the compliments paid to it. It is not a great healer. It is an indifferent and perfunctory one. Sometimes it does not heal at all. And sometimes when it seems to, no healing has been necessary.

Anyone who picks up a Compton-Burnett finds it very hard not to put it down.

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

I am ill at ease with people whose lives are an open book.

A plot is like the bones of a person, not interesting like expression, or signs of experience, but the support of the whole.

The most original novelist now writing in English.