Ivy Compton-Burnett Quotes

If you are going through something with one of your parents, you know that there is this feeling inside you constantly that something is wrong. Even if you want to pretend that it doesn't matter to you or you don't care, the truth of the matter is that you do, because they are your parents and you love them.

I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.

Drama asks some uncomfortable questions at times... It goes to pretty dark places.

Sibling rivalry was, and still is to this day, rampant in my family. We were all competing for my parents' divided attention.

I reproach so many things about my family, but on the other hand, I kept asking them to be my family.

It's unresolved conflict in my life that I have a lovely family and a risky job.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.

My parents' marriage was very rocky. They were always arguing. When they split up when I was in my 20s, my brother and I were both delighted because we knew they weren't good for each other.

The history of fiction is about family - an inexhaustible subject for literature. We are creatures driven by emotions that are on high display in intimate relations - inside the family.

Basically, when I hear the words 'family drama,' I run in the opposite direction.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

There's a lot of conflict and darkness inside everybody's family. We all pretend to outsiders that it's not so, but behind locked doors, there are usually high emotions running.

It seemed like my father and I were always fighting. I know a lot of kids go through that with their families, but it was hard for me.

The only way you can write about a happy family in a drama is to make them unhappy.

There are times families don't see eye to eye.

My childhood was very beautiful in some ways and very disturbing in others.

Who hasn't had an argument with their mother-in-law?

My grandmother is really awful sometimes.

Yes, a family is interesting. You can get a lot of drama in the conflicts there. It's like the sea. It seems calm, but inside there is conflict.

I didn't know if I would ever reconcile with my family, and I needed to believe that I could forgive, regardless.

I've always had a hard time just being angry or just being really sad - the bigger emotions.

Firequencher raised his hand. "I've been staying out of family conversations. Do I get credit for that?

Cole made a hissing sound. "Are you inside yet? God bless America and all her sons. What is taking you so long?" The front door was locked. "Here, talk to Grace" "Mommy isn't going to give a different answer than Daddy," Cole said, but I handed her the phone anyway.

My cup of sweets is not unmingled: it is dashed with a bitterness that I cannot hide from myself, disguise it as I will.