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"I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation."
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"Integrity is more than truth and honesty; integrity is an unshackled mind, a happy heart, and a light spirit. Integrity is inner peace with a clear, clean conscience. Integrity is self-respect, honor, and credibility. Integrity is healthy and unfettering, and it is worth defending."
"Because I'm selfish. I'm a coward. I'm the kind of girl who, when she might actually be of use, would run to stay alive and leave those who couldn't follow to suffer and die."
"The main qualities that had earned him this universal respect in the service were, first, an extreme indulgence towards people, based on his awareness of his own shortcomings; second, a perfect liberalism, not the sort he read about in the newspapers, but the sort he had in his blood, which made him treat all people, whatever their rank or status, in a perfectly equal and identical way; and, third - most important - a perfect indifference to the business he was occupied with, owing to which he never got carried away and never made mistakes."
"The psychoanalysis of neurotics has taught us to recognize the intimate connection between wetting the bed and the character trait of ambition."
"The Christian should stand out like a sparkling diamond against a rough background. He should be more wholesome than anyone else. He should be poised, cultured, courteous, gracious, but firm in the things that he does and does not do. He should laugh and be radiant, but he should refuse to allow the world to pull him down to its level."
"Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity."
"Santi and Wolfe exchanged a look. Wolfe inclined his head a little to the side, with a strange, crooked smile. "You see? They're as bad as we are.""Worse," Santi sighed."
Explore more quotes by Penelope Lively
"There's a preoccupation with memory and the operation of memory and a rather rapacious interest in history."
"I've always been fascinated by the operation of memory - the way in which it is not linear but fragmented, and its ambivalence."
"The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some new approach, an alternative way of telling a story and manipulating characters; the novel is such a wonderfully flexible form."
"It was a combination of an intense interest in children's literature, which I've always had, and the feeling that I'd just have a go and see if I could do it."
"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."
"Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present."
"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."
"I'm writing another novel and I know what I'm going to do after, which may be something more like this again, maybe some strange mixture of fiction and non-fiction."
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