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

Penelope Lively

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Penelope Lively
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: March 17
Novelist
Radio Personality
Writer
Cairo
Egypt
Penelope Low
Dame Penelope Margaret Lively
Perception
Collectives
Present
Suit
History
Collective
Past
Frequently
Require
Equally
Reinterpretation
Suits
Perceptions
Endless
Hence

More quotes by Penelope Lively

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Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.
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All history, of course, is the history of wars.
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The Photograph is concerned with the power that the past has to interfere with the present: the time bomb in the cupboard.
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History unravels circumstances, following their natural inclination, prefer to remain ravelled.
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I rather like getting away from fiction.
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In old age, you realise that while you're divided from your youth by decades, you can close your eyes and summon it at will. As a writer it puts one at a distinct advantage.
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There's a fearful term that's in fashion at the moment - closure. People apparently believe it is desirable and attainable.
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It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.
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I am addicted to arrivals, to those innocent dawn moments from which history accelerates.
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We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.
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the days of our lives vanish utterly, more insubstantial than if they had been invented. Fiction can seem more enduring than reality.
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I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.
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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.
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The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.
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Every novel generates its own climate, when you get going.
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People die, but money never does.
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If we had not met, that day, I think I would have imagined you somehow.
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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.
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It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.
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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