Penelope Lively Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Maybe 10 times a year I'll do a corporate date, but no casinos or no nightclubs or no comedy clubs.
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I feel optimistic about how heterogeneous societies pull together. We just have to keep on with the struggle.
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I always appreciate people's opinions, but sometimes I have to take a step back and remember why I'm writing and what I want to do with it. Shutting out the voices is difficult but it's been good for me.
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The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.
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My eye is ever on those who love me.
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The things that have really gotten confusing to me is how you balance the desires of your publishers to produce things on a schedule, and people are always sort of giving you ideas on what you should follow up with or how you should proceed next and things like that.
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What impresses men is not mind, but the result of mind.
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I can remember loving to recruit. I knew I was going to do my best. But traveling and recruiting doesn't appeal to me any more. It's not as much fun as it used to be.
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I can't give more than I have. It doesn't matter if I am the most beautiful person in the room. There is inevitably going to be somebody way shinier and more tan than my pasty self.
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I don't want them to read what I'm writing and say, 'I think that's right,' and agree with me. I want them to read something and then walk away and be haunted by it.
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My choosing Islam was not a political statement; it was a spiritual statement.
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Meditation is difficult for many people because their thoughts are always on some distant object or place. One form of meditation is to label the thought as it appears and then choose to let it go.
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I remember feeling that Michael was extremely sensitive when it came to that moment. Most directors are and they usually rely, at least in my experience, on the actress to take over. And Michael is a gentleman.
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French people are never happy with what they have. They're always complaining. They're happy when they're complaining.
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My first film 'Saawariya' was a flop; I don't regret it.
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Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.
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When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it's Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.
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There are still some terrible cliches in the presentation of Indian fiction. The lotus flower. The hennaed hands. In mainland Europe, people still slap these images on my books and I go bananas.
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I love a nice tailored suit, but I also like to dress down. It all depends on what mood I'm in.
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I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
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What I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to hospitals, that allow them to be, to transfer property between partners, to make certain that they're not discriminated on the job.
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The pop industry is so well-practised at channelling young people's creative energy that I think it gets abused.
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After sitting for two to three hours at a stretch, my feet just swell up. So I try to walk as much as I can.
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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.
