Penelope Lively

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#fictional #firmly #i #i do #like

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

#country #during #empty #family #few

I rather like getting away from fiction. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#fiction #getting #i #like #rather

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

#archaeology #aspect #get #historian #i

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

— Penelope Lively

#come #curiosity #else #getting #involves

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

#again #another #fiction #going #i

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

#ambivalence #been #fascinated #fragmented #i

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#contingency #disconcerting #everything #happens #me

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

#children #combination #could #feeling #go

The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#century #change #consideration #gain #i