Top 32 Quotes by Penelope Lively

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

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

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.

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

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

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

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

Deep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country.

You learn a lot, writing fiction.

I didn't want it to be a book that made pronouncements.