Penelope Lively Quotes

Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are.
Penelope Lively

Someone, Else, Getting

I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one.
Penelope Lively

Life, Beautiful, Woman

I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.
Penelope Lively

Grateful, Agnostic, King

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.
Penelope Lively

Past, Sense, Identity

All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.
Penelope Lively

Writing, Old, Able

The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
Penelope Lively

Writing, Story, Pleasure

Deep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country.
Penelope Lively

Deep, Feeling, Down

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.
Penelope Lively

History, Past, Present

Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.
Penelope Lively

Novel, Climate, Generates

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.
Penelope Lively

Children, Thought, Might

I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.
Penelope Lively

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
Penelope Lively

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.
Penelope Lively

Character, Occupation, Fictional

I rather like getting away from fiction.
Penelope Lively

Away, Rather, Getting

I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.
Penelope Lively

Memory, Operation, Fascinated

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.
Penelope Lively

Choice, Happens, Seems

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.
Penelope Lively

Change, Rather, Social

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.
Penelope Lively

Time, Power, Past

The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.
Penelope Lively

Time, Past, After

There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.
Penelope Lively

History, Rather, Memory

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.
Penelope Lively

Choices, Constantly

We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible.
Penelope Lively

Until, Read, Bible

You learn a lot, writing fiction.
Penelope Lively

Writing, Learn, Fiction

Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters contributed a distinctive version of the story.
Penelope Lively

Book, Different, Wanted

I can walk about London and see a society that seems an absolutely revolutionary change from the 1950s, that seems completely and utterly different, and then I can pick up on something where you suddenly see that it's not.
Penelope Lively

Change, Society, Different

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Biography

Nationality: English

Type: Author

Born: March 17, 1933

Links

Find on Amazon: Penelope Lively

Cite this Page: Citation

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