Penelope Lively Quotes

Literature has a lot to answer for, where concepts of the countryside are concerned.

All habits are geared towards the linear, the sequential, but memory refuses such orderliness.

I believe that the experience of childhood is irretrievable. All that remains, for any of us, is a handful of brilliant frozen moments, already dangerously distorted by the wisdoms of maturity.

Wars are fought by children—conceived by their mad demonic elders, and fought by boys.

Since then, I have just read and read – but, that said, I suppose there is a raft of writers to whom I return again and again, not so much because I want to write like them, even if I were capable of it, but simply for a sort of stylistic shot in the arm.