Penelope Lively Quotes
I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.
Quotes to Explore
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You don't have to be an heiress to look like one, if you act like one then everyone will just presume you are one.
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I don't read other science fiction. I don't read any at all.
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I know my corn plants intimately, and I find it a great pleasure to know them.
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A trade war would be a disaster for the world. It's very easy to slip into a trade war.
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When the Islamic revolution began in 1979 under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, it aroused considerable admiration in the Arab street. It presented a model of organised popular action that deposed one of the region's most tyrannical regimes. The people of the region discerned in this revolution new hope for freedom and change.
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Olympic champions should be 100 per cent athletes who have made the sacrifices.
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Pure art is a noble pursuit. Applied art is a business. That's one reason design firms have been so eager of late to add consulting and manufacturing to their core aesthetic competencies.
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Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
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All over London as one walks, one everywhere, in the season, sees oranges to sell; and they are in general sold tolerably cheap, one and even sometimes two for a halfpenny; or, in our money, threepence.
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Musical theater is one of my passions.
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It's a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can't ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it's impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.
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All you can do is focus on telling the best story you can with compelling characters. If you do it right, it will endure. If you do it wrong, it won't.
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The more women serve in executive office, the more confidence they gain in themselves and that voters gain in them.
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Self-doubt is real. Everyone has it. Having confidence and losing confidence is real, too, and everyone has been in that position.
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My three husbands were afraid of me. I am a very powerful woman.
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I want to give the audience a hint of a scene. No more than that. Give them too much and they won't contribute anything themselves. Give them just a suggestion and you get them working with you. That's what gives the theater meaning: when it becomes a social act.
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Things do not pass for what they are, but for what they seem. Most things are judged by their jackets.
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You can tell if there's magic in something. When you start it, you want to finish it and you want it to be perfect. If you're not inspired, and you're working hard to pull inspiration from somewhere and make a song something it's not, then it's very contrived, and I don't like to write music that's contrived.
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I crocheted a blanket larger than a king-size bed. I just kept going.
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If you've made enough money where you're not worried about the rent or survival, you start asking yourself why you're on this planet. Your point is to do the most good you can before you die - well, I could do more good if I didn't die.
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I don't analyse things, and I don't look back. I can think forward - but only about my family. I don't look outside that and certainly don't care what anyone else thinks.
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I'm really close to all of my family.
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A foreign country can best be understood through its literature.
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I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.
