The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form.
Penelope LivelyRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Reading is essential for personal nourishment and creativity.
In this quote, Penelope Lively emphasizes the fundamental role that reading plays in her life. She expresses that the act of reading not only satisfies her intellectual curiosity but also fuels her passion for writing; without the ability to explore new books or revisit beloved ones, she feels she would be deprived of the inspiration necessary for her own creative pursuits.
Themes
ReadingImportanceWritingCreativityInspiration
In practice
Example use cases
During a reading workshop, I shared a quote highlighting the importance of literature in nurturing creativity.
More from Penelope Lively
All quotes →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.
Penelope LivelyRead
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 LivelyRead
Giving presents is one of the most possessive things we do, did you realize that? It's the way we keep a hold on other people. Plant ourselves in their lives.
Penelope LivelyRead
The idea that memory is linear is nonsense. What we have in our heads is a collection of frames. As to time itself-can it be linear when all these snatches of other presents exist at once in your mind? A very elusive and tricky concept, time.
Penelope LivelyRead
Similar quotes
Books are the building blocks of civilization and a people without books are a people without history, a people with no story older than the tales of the oldest man or woman.
Louis L'AmourRead
Reading is like looking through several windows which open to an infinite landscape....For me life without reading would be like being in prison, it would be as if my spirit were in a straightjacket; life would be a very dark and narrow place.
Isabel AllendeRead
Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.
Emma GoldmanRead
Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in.
Aldous HuxleyRead
Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.
Matthew HenryRead
But I marvel when I observe these men setting themselves up as instructors of youth who cannot see that they are applying the analogy of an art with hard and fast rules to a creative process
IsocratesRead