J. Ivy Quotes

We none of us talk to people as we do behind their backs.

[On writing:] What a difficult kind of work to choose! But of course one did not choose it. There was no choice.

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.

People have never lost what they think they have.

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

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

Civilized life exacts its toll.

To young people the future is still long.

Our desires have a way of getting bigger with our incomes.

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

Ah, we have to be generous to be grateful ... One has oneself to be a giver.

Truth is so impossible. Something has to be done for it.

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

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

It is not for us to hold ourselves above the position of grateful people. We have to be able to accept. Anything else shows an unwillingness to grant someone else the superior place.

If I were not a child with my parents, they would be more unloving toward me.

Real charity and real ability never to condemn-the one real virtue-is so often the result of a waking experience that gives a glimpse of what lies beneath things.

Duty is seldom liked either by the doer or the object ... And why should it be? It is not often of advantage to either.

Never is a long word.

We do not discuss the members of our family to their faces.

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

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

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.

We are always children to our mothers.

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.

Recognize that both men and women might be more comfortable opening up to a woman than a man. Use that to your advantage.

I care more about an agenda than story and character.

Poetry became my doctor, my lover.

Sometimes the nicest people are the ones who've been hurt the most

Ivy! It's a natural disaster! You have to be there!

I watch a spider outside my window, how she carefully weaves a dreamcatcher in the corner. Just for me.

Now I understand - how sleep allows you to forget, but your pain wakes with the dawn, worse because for a split second you don't remember what you've suffered.

I don't understand how the pain of losing him can be a pale shadow in comparison to the pain of finding him again.

Every major life decision I made came from my pain, guilt and shame...even down to the man I chose for a husband.

What most couples fail to realize is that marriage vows denote change.

I want to be someone strong and brave enough to make hard choices. But I want to be fair and loving enough to make the right ones.

Often, when I am able to check out a book, I read it a dozen times before returning it, desperate to remain lost in the magic of someone else's story.

I'm not sure how we got to this place, where a girl's only value is in what kind of marriage she has, how capable she is of keeping a man happy.

My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent values, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side.

But there's something fundamentally wrong in a system where a girl like Meredith would even consider staying with a boy like Dylan if she has the chance to be free of him.

But words mattered, more so in Newark than many other places. In a world where income and possessions were limited, words represented dignity, pride, self-worth.

I don't trust most people. Except for you.""Why me?""Because everyone needs someone to put their faith in.

Remember, you will always fail in business if you don't try to open your own business.

Real estate is the best investment on earth, however, when the music stops playing, which happens occasionally, don't be the one left without a chair.

A title from the1966 movie"The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, " gives a new meaning toa phrase: "wait a minute, we've seen this movie before

The minute you stop caring about your business, is the same minute your business stops caring about you.

Know this about yourself: there is only one reason professional salespeople lose orders-- they are outsold.

You’re easy to read, Ivy, but the whole book of you is complicated.

My mission is not to make him happy and bear his children and be his wife. My mission is to kill him.

But recognizing the ridiculousness of an emotion and being able to master it are two very different things, I'm finding.