Penelope Lively Quotes

I'm fascinated by people in general and what interests them, what it is that someone connects to or what it is that they're passionate about.

Sometimes, we only get to know someone as one aspect of who they are. Then you start peeling back the layers and understanding more and more about who they are - their vulnerabilities, their fears, their joys, all those other words that equal humanity.

I'm insanely curious about life and everyone's story and where they come from and how they got to be who they are.

We have to listen to other people's stories. That's the thing. And that's the only way that we eventually get to know ourselves.

I've never been interested in things that sparkle and shine; I'm more interested in people.

A man doesn't have to have all the answers; children will teach him how to parent them, and in the process will teach him everything he needs to know about life.

People are people, and they want to know about their own experiences.

Some of my best friends here in New York have pasts I have a hard time reconciling with the people I'm close to now. But I wouldn't change them - or their pasts - for anything in the world. Their experiences are what made them the people they are today.

The things that we love tell us what we are.

Part of adulthood is searching for the people who understand you.

I realized late in life that my twin passions are music and people.

It's best to know a little about where you're coming from and why you've arrived where you are.

My mother's openness has remained inspiring to me. I strive to be a skeptic, in the best sense of that word: I question everything, and yet I'm open to everything. And I don't have immovable beliefs. My values shift and grow with my experiences - and as my context changes, so does what I believe.

I love figuring out a stranger, sitting down and learning about their loves and struggles and everything. People are my jam.

I was never obsessed with being adopted. I was simply curious about my biological parents.

Getting to know people as they are is very, very important.

To know me is to love me. This cliche is popular for a reason, because most of us, I imagine, believe deep in our hearts that if anyone truly got to know us, they'd truly get to love us - or at least know why we're the way we are. The problem in life, maybe the central problem, is that so few people ever seem to have sufficient curiosity to do the job on us that we know we deserve.

There are far too many people for us to think about each of them during our short stay on earth—like the thousands of books in a library we haven’t time to read in an afternoon. But this is no excuse to cease browsing. For every now and then, we find that one book that reaches us deep inside and introduces us to ourselves. And, in someone else’s story, we come to understand our own.

Only in Relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It's the mirror of your consciousness; this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joy and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.

They say: 'If a man knew himself, he would know all mankind.' I say: 'If a man loved mankind, he would know something of himself.

You would be amazed at who people are once you know yourself.

There is no other way to find ourselves but in each others faces.

We are who we are because somebody loved us.

Most of your suffering comes from the lack of understanding of yourself and others.

We really wanted to know all the unknowable things about each other and how we were the same and how we were different, if we even were, maybe nobody is.