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" 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. "

Penelope Lively

Archaeology

I Can

Interested

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Penelope Lively

Know

Writing

" I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation. "

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" We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible. "

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Penelope Lively

Rather

Getting

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

" I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence. "

" Deep down I have this atavistic feeling that really I should be in the country. "

" The consideration of change over the century is about loss, though I think that social change is gain rather than loss. "

" There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history. "

" 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. "

" I'm now an agnostic but I grew up on the King James version, which I'm eternally grateful for. "

Penelope Lively

Grateful

King

" I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children. "