Penelope Lively Quotes

Everyone has early fiction fantasies, but it wasn't until my second child Betsy was born that I allowed the urge to write a novel bubble up.

Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything. If you don't write stories you love, you'll never make it. If you don't write stories that other people love, you'll never make it.

The best ideas are those that really affect me emotionally - those are the ones you never forget. You think to yourself, 'I want to write that book', for years; those are the ideas that I love to work with, and 'The Bone Garden' was one of them.

One thing I always did in my career was writing. I always was writing. I was trying to create things. For myself, for other people.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

I don't think there's a shortage of material in the world. Or in my head. I just pray for continued good health, because I've got other stories to tell.

I was reading a lot of books I admired, and thought that I would like to write something like that someday.

As an author, I've never forgotten how to daydream.

I've been writing for as long as I can remember, and reading even before that. My mom still has stories that I wrote when I was in kindergarten. I was a reader and a re-reader. That's the main reason I became a writer.

I'm addicted to creating and writing.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it.

I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to say something about home.

A story in your head isn't a story. It's just a daydream until you actually write it down. So write it down.

I started to read at a very early age, and I just thought that books and reading were really the most wonderful thing that life had to offer. I think I wrote my very first piece of fiction at the age of 12, but then I didn't write any more for quite a long time.

I gave up writing children's books. I wanted to escape from them as I had once wanted to escape from 'Punch': as I have always wanted to escape. In vain.

I used to read about people who'd say, 'I dream my books, and then I write them down.' And I was like, 'Oh, please.'

Readers would email me and say, 'Please write a novel about so-and-so,' but it has to come from yourself and not so much from your readership.

Read a lot. Write a lot. Have fun.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I never studied writing, but I'd always been a reader and had a secret fantasy about being a writer.

I didn't know anything about writers. It never occurred to me they were regular people and that I could grow up to become one, even though I loved to make up stories inside my head.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.

I just write the books that I think I would want to read.