IVY COMPTON-BURNETT

There is probably nothing like living together for blinding people to each other.

At a certain point my novels set. They set just as hard as that jam jar. And then I know they are finished.

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

There isn't much to say. I haven't been at all deedy.

A leopard does not change his spots, or change his feeling that spots are rather a credit.

There is more difference within the sexes than between them.

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

Well, of course, people are only human... But it really does not seem much for them to be.

Time 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.

Parents have too little respect for their children, just as the children have too much for the parents.

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!

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?

You should not want to know the things in people's minds. If you were meant to hear them, they would be said.

charm should be on the surface. It has no hidden use.

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.

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

Civilized life exacts its toll.

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

some people always have a touch of youth about them.

Most of the pleasure of making a book would go if it held nothing to be shared by other people. I would write for a few dozen people, and sometimes it seems that I do so, but I would not write for no-one.

Dear, dear, the miniature world of the family! All the emotions of mankind seem to find a place in it.

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

Many people misjudge the permanent effect of sorrow, and their capacity to live in the past.

We can build upon foundations anywhere if they are well and firmly laid.

Never is a long word.