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
lying years forever
And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a place where you cannot see ahead; there is nothing of which to be certain except what lies behind. This should be terrifying, but somehow it is not.
allow characters forms main narrative points version
Conventional forms of narrative allow for different points of view, but for this book I wanted a structure whereby each of the main characters contributed a distinctive version of the story.
english-author raft shot simply since sort stylistic suppose whom writers
Since then, I have just read and read - but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm.
english-author interest
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.
came greek until
We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible.
Deep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country.
aspect english-author historian whether
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.
successful egypt jerusalem
Born in Jerusalem, Wadie Said went from being a dragoman to a salesman in the United States and thence to a hugely successful businessman in Egypt.
writing fiction writing-fiction
You learn a lot, writing fiction.
memories preoccupation operations
There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.
past fiction tricky
The present hardly exists, after all-it becomes the past even as it happens. A tricky medium, time - and central to the concerns of fiction.
choices contingency seems
It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.
writing wells
I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
climate novel
Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.