Penelope Lively

We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible.

Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present.

The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

I've always been very determined, ever since I was a little girl, to make my way.

That metre itself forms an essential part of all true poetry is a principle which not even the assertions of an Aristotle or the pronouncements of a Plato can disestablish.