“Other people's houses always intrigued her by the contrast they offered to Greystones; she would see suddenly -- with detached interest and quite without envy or criticism -- the extent to which other people's preoccupations differed from her own.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“The house squatted around them, vast, empty, unnecessary and indestructible. You had to be a fat busy Victorian family to expand enough to fill up basements and passages and conservatives and attics. You had to have an army of bootboys… — 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 Image
“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 Image
There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
“He felt marvellously conscious of the moment, of here and now, of this day.” — 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 of data… — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
Getting to know someone else involves curiosity about where they have come from, who they are. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“The power of language. Preserving the ephemeral; giving form to dreams, permanence to sparks of sunlight.” — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from. — Penelope Lively Copy Share Image
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 Image
