We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“He felt marvellously conscious of the moment, of here and now, of this day.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“Time and the universe lie around in our minds. We are sleeping histories of the world.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
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… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“They sat for several hours over a pot of tea and a plate of cake, and then they wandered the streets, impervious… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“History is a slippery business; the past is not a constant but a landscape that mutates according to argument and opinion.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“I never told her the other story, in which she stars, in which she is always the heroine – a romanticized story… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“But her thoughts are often of the past. That evanescent, pervasive, slippery internal landscape known to no one else, that vast accretion… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“His prime resource is the leaky vessel of is own memory. At times he views it thus, quite literally- as some old… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“It is not enough to live here and now. Not enough for me, anyway. I need those imaginative leaps out of my… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“A stone has been cast into the reliable immutable pond of the past, and as the ripples subside everything appears different. The… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“I know quite well why I became a historian… It was because dissension was frowned upon when I was a child: 'Don't argue, Claudia,'… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
“The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history. I've always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresey. Shake… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history. — Penelope Lively Copy Share
“He felt marvellously conscious of the moment, of here and now, of this day.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share
“But her thoughts are often of the past. That evanescent, pervasive, slippery internal landscape known to no one else, that vast accretion of data… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. — Penelope Lively Copy Share
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… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
Since then, I have just read and read - but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
“I have a print - you can buy them at the Victoria and Albert Museum - of a photograph of the village street of… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
“The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share
Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters… — Penelope Lively Copy Share
