Penelope Lively
I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.
Penelope LivelyI didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.
Penelope LivelyI do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.
Penelope LivelyThat kind of monologue is something of a challenge - finding the right note, the right language, but also exhilarating.
Penelope LivelyEvery novel generates its own climate, when you get going.
Penelope LivelyThe 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 LivelyWe make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.
Penelope LivelyWe all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.
Penelope LivelyI rather like getting away from fiction.
Penelope LivelyDeep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country.
Penelope LivelyIt seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.
Penelope LivelyI've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence.
Penelope LivelyThe consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.
Penelope LivelyI didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
Penelope LivelyYou learn a lot, writing fiction.
Penelope LivelyEqually, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.
Penelope LivelyAll 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 LivelyI 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 LivelyI married young and had children young.
Penelope LivelyI'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 LivelyIt 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 LivelyI didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.
Penelope Lively
