Penelope Lively Quotes

Penelope Lively — English Author born on March 17, 1933,

Dame Penelope Margaret Lively DBE FRSL is a British writer of fiction for both children and adults. She has won both the Booker Prize and the Carnegie Medal for British children's books... (wikipedia)

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.

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

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

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

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