Penelope Lively Quotes, Sayings, Remarks, Thoughts and Speeches



Penelope Lively Quotes and Sayings


  • 1
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 2
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 3
    Deep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 4
    Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 5
    Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 6
    Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 7
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 8
    I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 9
    I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 10
    I didn't write anything until I was well over 30. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 11
    I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 12
    I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 13
    I have long been interested in landscape history, and when younger and more robust I used to do much tramping of the English landscape in search of ancient field systems, drove roads, indications of prehistoric settlement. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 14
    I rather like getting away from fiction. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 15
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 16
    I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 17
    I'm not an historian but I can get interested - obsessively interested - with any aspect of the past, whether it's palaeontology or archaeology or the very recent past. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 18
    I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 19
    I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 20
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 21
    It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 22
    It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 23
    Since then, I have just read and read - but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 24
    The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 25
    The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 26
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 27
    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 | Refcard PDF
  • 28
    There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 29
    We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 30
    We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 31
    We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF
  • 32
    You learn a lot, writing fiction. Penelope Lively | Refcard PDF

 

  

  

 

  

Author Name

Nut Quote: Famous Quotes, Inspirational Quotes, Motivational Quotes, Inspirational Thoughts, Love Quotes, Thoughts of the Day and More