"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."

Past,

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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."

Exlpore more Past quotes

"How do you know that past exist?"

Deyth Banger, American Blogger

Past, Truth, Wisdom, Life, Power

"Not to be born is, past all prizing, best."

Sophocles, Greek Poet

Past,

"Whether you need to remember the past or not, It changes nothing but gives the best choice for the future that makes You always to remember your past."

Auliq Ice, Ugandan Economist

Past, Future, Life, Choice

"Reliving your painful past will poison your heart and your tomorrow."

Bryant McGill, American Poet

Past, Poison, Life, Truth

"The present in New York is so powerful that the past is lost."

John Jay Chapman, American Poet

Past, Present

"Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present."

Helen Dunmore, British Poet

Past, Present

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

George Santayana, American Philosopher

Past,

"The past is a shadow; the present is real."

Osho, Indian Philosopher

Past, Mindfulness

"Don't be unnecessarily burdened by the past. Go on closing chapters that you have read."

Osho, Indian Philosopher

Past, Letting Go

"The past is the only dead thing that smells sweet."

Cyril Connolly, English Journalist

Past,

Explore more quotes by Penelope Lively

"We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance."

Choice

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

Memory

"You learn a lot, writing fiction."

Fiction

"Equally, we require a collective past - hence the endless reinterpretations of history, frequently to suit the perceptions of the present."

History

"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."

Fiction

"I'm not an historian and I'm not wanting to write about how I perceive the social change over the century as a historian, but as somebody who's walked through it and whose life has been dictated by it too, as all our lives are."

Change

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

Now

"I rather like getting away from fiction."

Fiction

"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."

Time

"I'm intrigued by the way in which physical appearance can often direct a person's life; things happen differently for a beautiful woman than for a plain one."

Life