“The pleasure of writing fiction is that you are always spotting some n...” — Penelope Lively Quote

“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.”

“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.”

“We read Greek and Norse mythology until it came out of our ears. And the Bible.”

“As a child, I had loved history because it showed so many alternative worlds.”

“The Chinese have done some extraordinary things in terms of the investments they've made in alternative sources of energy.”

“I have been listening a lot to The Carpenters and Neil Diamond, Elton John, and thinking, like, 'God, it'd be great to write a sort of subversive, alternative ballad,' like Lou Reed does so well with 'Perfect Day.' And I really loved 'Video Games' - at the time, it hadn't really got as big, but it's a classic song; you can't deny it.”