#y

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. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#book #characters #contributed #conventional #different

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

— Penelope Lively

#country #deep #deep down #down #feeling

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

— Penelope Lively

#endless #equally #frequently #hence #history

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. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#absolutely #change #completely #different #i

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#children #had #i #might #particular

I didn't write anything until I was well over 30. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#i #over #until #well #write

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

— Penelope Lively

#fictional #firmly #i #i do #like

I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#country #during #empty #family #few

I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#been #century #change #dictated #historian

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. ↗

— Penelope Lively

#archaeology #aspect #get #historian #i