Dictionaries Dictionaries Quotes by Penelope Lively

“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

“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

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

— Penelope Lively

“He felt marvellously conscious of the moment, of here and now, of this day.”

— Penelope Lively

People die, but money never does.

— Penelope Lively

“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

Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

— Penelope Lively

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

— Penelope Lively

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

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

“I have a print - you can buy them at the Victoria and Albert Museum - of a photograph of the village street of…

— Penelope Lively

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

— Penelope Lively