"In the age of the concentration camp, when from 1935 to 1947 or so, she wrote her very best novels, no writer did more to illumine the springs of human cruelty, suffering and bravery."

Ivy Compton-Burnett Literature See all quotes by Ivy Compton-Burnett →

React to this quote

More by Ivy Compton-Burnett

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

“The most original novelist now writing in English.”

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

“Well, of course, people are only human," said Dudley to his brother, as they walked to the house behind the women. "But it really does not seem much for them to be.”

“Time has too much credit," said Bridget. "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.”

“Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth," said his cousin. "But we seem to have no other.”

Resonant Thoughts

"The writer's only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much that he can't get rid of it. He has no peace until then. Ev…"

— William Faulkner

Literature1923–1962

#books

"I want a poetry that can learn as much from popular culture as from serious culture. A poetry that seeks the pleasure and emotionality of the popular arts without losing the precision, concentration, …"

— Dana Gioia

Literature1950

#philosophy

"Your practical statesmanship which disdains to take George Washington and Abraham Lincoln or the soldiers of the Revolution or of the Civil War as models, has looked in some cases to Spain for your ex…"

— George Frisbie Hoar

Law1826–1904

#war