A Quote by Penelope Lively

But who knows their own child? You know bits - certain predictable reactions, a handful of familiar qualities. The rest is impenetrable. And quite right too. You give birth to them. You do not design them.
When people are too present, too familiar or too in our face, something happens to us psychologically. We begin to tune them out, we begin to get sick of them, we begin to know them so well and become so familiar with who they are that we loose a bit of respect for them. You pass a certain threshold with the fact that you're too present in their lives, too much in their face and once that threshold is passed you're never going to repair it they have lost a certain respect for you.
Your film is like your children. You might want a child with certain qualities, but you are never going to get the exact specification right. The film has a privilege to live its own life and develop its own character. To suppress this is dangerous. It is an approach that works the other way too: sometimes the footage has amazing qualities that you did not expect.
Anyway everyboy (sorry) knows that what women have done that is really important is not to constitute a great, cheap labor force that you can zip in when you're at war and zip out again afterwards but to Be Mothers, to form the coming generation, to give birth to them, to nurse them, to mop floors for them, to love them, cook for them, clean for them, change their diapers, pick up after them, and mainly sacrifice themselves for them. This is the most important job in the world. That's why they don't pay you for it.
The hardest bits of my book to read were the easiest bits to write because they were the most immediate. Probably because I had never stopped thinking about them on some level. Those bits I was just channelling and those were the most exciting writing days. The bits I found harder were the bits that happen in between, you know, the rest of living. There were whole years, whole houses, that I just got rid of.
Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.
I've always vowed that if I had a child, I would treat him right. My father was a perfect model for me because everything that he did wrong, or everything that he did I would just do the opposite. Which would be the right thing to do. So that is being in your son's life 100 percent, give them love, give them affection, give them discipline.
Obviously, you want to teach your child between right and wrong, respect and being kind to others, whether it's their sisters or parents. You try to teach them by example, talk to them and explain certain situations. But there's also a time to put them in time out or let them know they've made a mistake and try to learn from it.
The Final Jeopardy! questions seem to be, by design, things you can't know. And so it's not about who knows them, but who can figure them out in thirty seconds.
He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
When was the last time you wanted to say it all to the right person To have it all come out right, to surprise yourself at how together you could be. When was the last time you ever met someone who made you want to give it all to them I mean give yourself to them. Where you couldn't express yourself enough - like you wanted to cut off one of your arms to be understood. That's it - you would cut your head off to have someone understand you. You know how pointless that one is. You know how many times you've smashed yourself to bits on the rocks.
If there's a group like Amish people, that want to live their own lifestyle – they don't want to live in our city – they want to live out in the country, with their own projects. We’ll put up the buildings for them, design the buildings for them, design the food production systems for them – if they want us to. But we don’t control them.
She knows the rituals, she knows how we're supposed to be behaving...But I think these things are impenetrable and fraudulent, and I can't do them without feeling I'm acting.
Even a superstitious man has certain inalienable rights: the right to harbor and indulge his imbecilities, provided only that he does not try to inflict them upon others by force; he has the right to argue for them as eloquently as he can. But he has no right to be protected from the criticism of those who do not hold them. He has no right to demand that they be treated as sacred. He has no right to preach them without challenge.
There are bits of the literal future right here, right now, if you know how to look for them.
If a child plays sport early in childhood, and doesn't give it up, he will play sport for the rest of his life. And if children have a connection with, and are involved in the preparation of, the food they eat, then it will be normal for them to cook these kind of meals, and they will go on cooking them for the rest of their lives.
My parents were lovely. They've always been supportive. When you love your child, you don't know what to do with someone who wants to do what no one else does successfully. If I had someone younger I loved, I'd be worried for them too if I didn't have guidance to give them.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!