Penelope Fitzgerald Quotes

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

Some lessons take years to learn, with repeated exposure to the same path sometimes shadowed by the inner conscience of own souls. But eventually we learn, and our journey continues in another direction.

I think everything in life comes in threes: heartbreak and all that. You've got to do the full round in order to learn.

It's from being melancholy and having my human down experiences that I learn, that I overcome, that I transform - and these realizations I put into song. That's what I choose to put in my backpack and carry with me around the world.

I am a woman in process. I'm just trying like everybody else. I try to take every conflict, every experience, and learn from it. Life is never dull.

I really love 'Cold Song.' If anyone really listens to that song and thinks about their life, there's a lot of good material deep down in there. I think if you listen to the lyrics, it may take you on some sort of a journey.

There's a lesson to be learned out of everything we go through in life.

I learned a lot I wouldn't have learned roaming the streets of Dallas.

Most of what I've learnt is too personal or controversial to share, but nevertheless, experiences have helped me understand things better and have been necessary for what my journey in future will be.

You have to live through things. You can't have other people telling you to do that and do this. It's important to live through things.

Everyone has challenges and lessons to learn - we wouldn't be who we are without them.

This is going to sound pretentious and esoteric, but I truly mean it from the bottom of my heart. Acting has always been a spiritual journey for me. The very first project I ever acted on paralleled my experience so perfectly even before I was aware of it.

Every experience makes you grow.

Beyond just writing about falling in love and out of love and wanting to do certain things and going out and partying and all the things that I grew up writing about, I want to write about deeper things.

My act has always reflected what's going on in my life.

Few women, I fear, have had such reason as I have to think the long sad years of youth were worth living for the sake of middle age.

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.

I wanted to look at them because I feel, internally, that I am an ordinary person who has had an extraordinary life.

Pippin chooses love and finds a greater sense of himself at the end of all the madness. I relate to him in many ways. I have been through stuff, thought I knew best, and often been proven wrong.

Man learns through experience, and the spiritual path is full of different kinds of experiences. He will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, and they are the very experiences he needs to encourage and complete the cleansing process.

Certain stories we carry with us, events in our life, they define who we are. It's not a matter of getting over anything; we have to make the best of it.

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.

My inspiration comes from my real life experiences.

I think what my father appreciated was the science experiment of life. He had these kids, and they had their own experiences. He wanted us to discover the world for ourselves.

My advice would be not to write until after 35. You need some experience, and for life to knock you about a bit. Growing up is so hard you probably won't have much emotion to spare anyway.