English - Author | March 17, 1933 -
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
LifeBeautifulWomanBeautiful Woman
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.
PastI CanArchaeologyGetVeryAny
The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss.
ChangeThinkLossSocial ChangeOver
All I know for certain is that reading is of the most intense importance to me; if I were not able to read, to revisit old favorites and experiment with names new to me, I would be starved - probably too starved to go on writing myself.
MyselfMeWritingReadingNewKnow
There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history.
HistoryMemoryInterestRather
I didn't write anything until I was well over 30.
WriteOverAnythingWellUntil
It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it.
ChildrenLiteratureFeelingGoSee
I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.
ChildrenThinkThoughtSayAnything
We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible.
BibleOutMythologyEarsReadOur
I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for.
GratefulKingNowUpAgnosticWhich
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.
ChangeWalkSocietyYouI CanSee
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.
LifeChangeSocial ChangeWriteOver
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