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Penelope Lively Quotes

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Famous Penelope Lively Quotes

“And this is the most provocative situation, is it not? It invites abuse, manipulation, tyranny, subjection. A person is supposed to accommodate herself--himself--absolutely to another person. It is unnatural. OK, but it's nature that sets it up in the first place. Of course, of course. It is unnatural and provocative and precarious and challenging. It demands forbearance and stamina and abnormal powers of empathy and perception. It is also... And yes, it is also all those other things. The opposite. The converse. The place you want to be.”

LoveSelfRelationshipsEmpathyForbearanceAccomodation
Book:The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories
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“She wondered why happiness should be so acutely remembered when sorrow vanishes, like pain. Those brilliant tethered moments are seldom black. I was often miserable--but some kindly (or perverse) mechanism of the memory fades out all that, leaving quite other things, and hence an untruthful whole. We quarrelled, but all I have now of those quarrels is a pungent taste, not words nor phrases but a flavour: his silent back, my churning resentment.”

RelationshipsMemoriesLossGriefSorrowMourningQuarrelsBereavementMarriages
Book:Perfect Happiness
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