But one had been brought up an Anglican, and the process of change would have been a great bother

In fact, Laura had often thought that she would have liked to be a Catholic; she had always felt an affinity with those big busy cool churches abroad, the smell of incense, obsequious priests, candles. Even the ghastly statues and pictures. But one had been brought up an Anglican, and the process of change would have been a great bother, and anyway one didn't feel all that strongly about it.

 P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979), 114

I don't ... and I bet you don't really either, only it doesn't do to say.

Take my own particular pond, James went on smoothly, now frankly one of the pleasures of impending retirement is to leave the [civil] Service with a sense of how very much its recruitment has changed since my own youth. We are broader based. I like it.

I don't, thought Laura, and I bet you don't really either, only it doesn't do to say.

P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979), 93

Observed that a state primary is as good as anything provided by the private sector and free into the bargain

Martin Bryan and the Coggans went to the primary school because that was where children went to school. The Palings went there because Clare and Peter, who had opinions about education, and knew a thing or two, had observed that a state primary is as good as anything provided by the private sector and free into the bargain.

P. Lively, Judgement day, (1980), 24

A medley of allusions, which add up now to a place which no longer exists in any sense at all

The Alexandria of the 1930s and 1940s survives now only in my mind, and in the minds of others. Most of whom knew it a great deal better than I did. For I did not know it at all, I realize, any more than I knew Cairo in any real sense. Much of it I never even saw — the densely populated slum quarters to the west of the city, the labyrinthine streets of downtown Alexandria, tucked behind the boulevards and shops. It was not one city but half a dozen, in which people moved on different planes, segregated by class and culture. And for me there was the further segregation of childhood. My Alexandria was a sybaritic dream. Peanuts in a paper cone, eaten on the Corniche. The suck and whoosh of the sea at the Spouting Rock. The milky-green curve of a surfing wave. The cool grip of a chameleon. Pistachio ice-cream. Macaroons. A medley of allusions, which add up now to a place which no longer exists in any sense at all.

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), 129

The central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters

Most young children take a pretty animistic line where domestic pets are concerned. For a number of years I was one of the judging panel for the largest children's creative-writing competition in this country and came to realize that the central concern of the nation's under-eight-year-olds is hamsters. Cats and dogs came next, with budgies doing quite well also.

P. Lively, Oleander, Jacaranda (1994), 47

Now her descendant did not know what a napkin ring was

It has come to this. Time was, that life could not proceed appropriately for a family such as my grandmother's without ownership of sauce ladles, knife rests and ivory-handled crumb scoops. Now her descendant did not know what a napkin ring was.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 197

One of the worst plights of the twentieth century has been to be Russian - at any point

One of the worst plights of the twentieth century has been to be Russian - at any point. They fought in the Great War with the other Allies. Then came the Revolution. Then the Civil War. Then the Red Terror. Then the Second World War. And beyond all this there was Stalin: Siberia lay in wait, and the gulags. Those of us who have spent most of our life in a politically stable country in peacetime can only look back in horror. And in ignorance. This is a dimension of distress that is barely conceivable.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 87

Two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility

Peering back into the 1940s, it is difficult to realize how deeply polarized society was then - even for one who was around at the time and exposed to its stringent rules and assumptions. There is a fair amount of mutual ignorance today between city and country, but it is tempered by two powerful forces of enlightenment - television and general mobility. The sight, sound and function of the countryside are familiar to all, if only through the windows of a car or as the backdrop to some news item or rural drama series.

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 36

Exmoor itself was a relatively recent discovery

Exmoor itself was a relatively recent discovery, opened up by the railway in much the same way as the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevada. People had not realized it was there - except of course those who had been living and working in those parts for centuries. but from the moment Isambard Kingdom Brunel's line snaked west towards the toe of the country and in due course threw out tentacles to net the whole of the peninsula, nothing would ever be the same again. 

P. Lively, A House unlocked (2001), 9

Hernando Cortez cannot be true

I wrote my Mexico book out of incredulity. Hernando Cortez cannot be true. There cannot have been a human being so brave, charismatic, obstinate and apparently indestructible. How could anyone be so greedy, fanatical, and unimaginative as to lead a few hundred men into an alien continent of whose topography he was ignorant, swarming with a race devoted to the slaughter and sacrifice of strangers, in order to take prisoner their their leader in his own capital city? And succeed. And then, when the tables are turned and he is driven out, set to and build thirteen vessels of war and carry them back one hundred and forty miles across mountains because the only way you can tackle a city sited in the middle of a lake is with superior shipping.And succeed again. Is a man who is impelled to do such things a hero or a maniac?

P.Lively, Moon tiger (1987)

War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press.

'Are we going to win the war?' asks Claudia.

'Yes. I assume so. Not because of the lord's intervention or because justice will prevail but because in the last resort we have greater resources. Wars have little to do with justice.Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That's one thing I hadn't quite realised. War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press. I hope you and your friends are doing something to put that right.' 

P. Lively, Moon Tiger (1987), 102-3

More like a war fought at sea than on land

He had been up at the front and he'd be going back there next week. Or wherever the front by then was - that indeterminate confusion of minefields and dispositions of vehicles in the empty neutral sand. He once described it to me as more like a war fought at sea than on land, a sequence of advances and retreats in which the participants related only to each other and barely at all to the landscape across which they moved. A war in which there was nothing to get in the way  - no towns, no villages, no people - and nothing tangible to  gain or lose.

P. Lively, Moon Tiger (1987), 72-73