Unless I am a part of everything I am nothing.

- Penelope Lively

The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system.

- Penelope Lively

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 Lively

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 pl…

- Penelope Lively

We all need a past - that's where our sense of identity comes from.

- Penelope Lively

It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency.

- Penelope Lively

And in another year everything will be different yet again. It is always like that, and always will be; you are forever standing on the brink, in a p…

- Penelope Lively

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance.

- Penelope Lively

It seems to me that anyone whose library consists of a Kindle lying on a table is some sort of bloodless nerd.

- Penelope Lively