We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from. Penelope Lively More Quotes by Penelope Lively More Quotes From Penelope Lively We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard. Penelope Lively lexicon latin museums It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd. Penelope Lively library nerd lying Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing. Penelope Lively I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one. Penelope Lively appearance beautiful way The day is refracted, and the next and the one after that, all of them broken up into a hundred juggled segments, each brilliant and self-contained so that the hours are no longer linear but assorted like bright sweets in a jar. Penelope Lively broken self sweet 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. Penelope Lively forever lying years We all act as hinges-fortuitous links between other people. Penelope Lively links work people Language tethers us to the world; without it we spin like atoms. Penelope Lively atoms language world Forever, reading has been central, the necessary fix, the support system. Her life has been informed by reading. She has read not just for distraction, sustenance, to pass the time, but she has read in a state of primal innocence, reading for enlightenment, for instruction, even. ... She is as much a product of what she has read as of the way in which she has lived; she is like millions of others built by books, for whom books are an essential foodstuff, who could starve without. Penelope Lively support-systems reading book But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them. Penelope Lively design giving children The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time. Penelope Lively mind memories ideas Wars are fought by children. Conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys. Penelope Lively boys war children It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency. Penelope Lively contingency everything-happens-for-a-reason choices The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form. Penelope Lively alternatives writing character the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality. Penelope Lively endure reality fiction I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates. Penelope Lively innocent moments dawn 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. Penelope Lively tricky fiction past I can remember the lush spring excitement of language in childhood. Sitting in church, rolling it around my mouth like marbles--tabernacle and pharisee and parable, tresspass and Babylon and covenant. Penelope Lively childhood church spring I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a headful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity. Penelope Lively childhood maturity believe 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. Penelope Lively privacy past years
