Penelope Lively Quotes

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

Penelope Lively

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I say the law should be blind to race, gender and sexual orientation, just as it claims to be blind to wealth and power. There should be no specially protected groups of any kind, except for children, the severely disabled and the elderly, whose physical frailty demands society's care.

  

  Camille Paglia
  • Children
  • Power
  • Society

• We in no way are naive to think that just because Russia and the United States agree to reduce their arsenals, that everyone else will fall in line.

  

  Valerie Plame
  • Think
  • Fall
  • Just Because

• Jesus Christ was a patriot! His country was the world. His laws were the eternal principles of liberty, and his followers, in every age, have been the chosen champions of freedom!

  

  Orson F. Whitney
  • World
  • Country
  • Age

• What does 'work' mean in this 21st, ultra-wired century, with its exploding new industries, low barriers to entry and endless possibilities? Is technology making our lives more flexible - or our days more endless?

  

  Rachel Sklar
  • Work
  • Technology
  • Barriers

• No one can be a yogi, maintaining a state of mental equilibrium, free from inner involvement in planned desireful activities, unless he has renounced identification with his ego and its unsatisfiable lust for the fruits of actions.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Free
  • Ego
  • Actions

• The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.

  

  Adam Cohen
  • May
  • American
  • History

• When the facts are on your side, there is huge power in pitching with questions. Because questions are active rather than passive. They necessitate a response.

  

  Dan Pink
  • Power
  • Facts
  • Questions

• The best world is one in which all countries cooperate with one another to kind of meet each other's needs and be partners in the process.

  

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
  • World
  • Best
  • Process

• You need to look no further than Apple's iPhone to see how fast brilliantly written software presented on a beautifully designed device with a spectacular user interface will throw all the accepted notions about pricing, billing platforms and brand loyalty right out the window.

  

  Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
  • Loyalty
  • Window
  • Brand

• From a scientific point of view, our mission is to seek answers to the fundamental questions about the universe. Many are open - we don't know about dark matter, which accounts for a quarter of the universe's matter, nor do we know why there's antimatter.

  

  Fabiola Gianotti
  • Why
  • Universe
  • Dark

• I'm single-minded. When I'm working on a project, all my attention is there.

  

  F. Gary Gray
  • Attention
  • Single
  • Working

• If I find myself just not feeling like writing songs anymore, I think I'll drop it. There's enough bad, insincere music out there. I don't need to contribute to that.

  

  Sir Isaac Brock KB
  • Music
  • Writing
  • Bad

• All architecture has a public nature, I believe, so I would like to make a public space.

  

  Tadao Ando
  • Believe
  • Nature
  • Space

• Vegetarian is like raising a kid Mennonite. It's difficult but not that different. Raising your kid vegan is like being Amish. A totally different world.

  

  Victoria Moran
  • World
  • Different
  • Difficult

• On the first 'Indiana Jones' movie, I tore an ACL in one of my knees - can't remember which knee. The scene in which I was fighting the big German mechanic on an airplane called a flying wing, I was run over by the landing gear and injured my knee, but I can't remember which one it was. Lots of bumps and injuries along the way.

  

  Harrison Ford
  • Remember
  • Movie
  • Fighting

• All mankind, right down to those you most despise, are your neighbors.

  

  Isaac Asimov

• Abraham Lincoln once said, 'All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my mother.' I'm not sure I want to say it quite like that, but my mother, Sonya Carson, was the earliest, strongest, and most impacting force in my life. It would be impossible to tell about my accomplishments without starting with my mother's influence.

  

  Ben Carson
  • Life
  • Mother
  • Hope

• What good is it? All this, what good is it? -Mariam

  

  Khaled Hosseini
  • Good

• It's extraordinary what that song has been used for - I think a lot of people who have gotten into trouble, have attached themselves to that song, and I think a lot of it is Kate's wonderful voice is there, in a sort of reassuring and loving way, and it just makes them think that perhaps there is going to be that type of love out there for them.

  

  Peter Gabriel Genesis
  • People
  • Song

• We need to work out who is paying for film; in the U.K., it is increasingly difficult to get production funds - and pre-sales demand more and more shot/cut material.

  

  Beeban Kidron
  • Work
  • Sales

• Madam, I have come from a country where people are hanged if they talk.

  

  Leonhard Euler
  • People
  • Country

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

  

  Penelope Lively