Penelope Lively
Penelope Lively
Dame Penelope Margaret Lively DBE FRSLis a British writer of fiction for both children and adults. She has won both the Booker Prizeand the Carnegie Medal for British children's books...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionChildren's Author
Date of Birth17 March 1933
past perception suits
Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.
character occupation fictional-character
I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.
photography past bombs
The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.
writing social century
I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are.
loss thinking lost-friendship
The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.
different london revolutionary
I 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.
writing fiction mixtures
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.
children war boys
Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys.
money people doe
People die, but money never does.
mind want sparks
You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not - life has been lived but it is still all going on, in the mind for better and for worse.
past years privacy
The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.
stuff messages logic
Mythology is much better stuff than history. It has form; logic; a message.
history natural circumstances
History unravels; circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.
fashion believe people
There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.