A House Unlocked Quotes

“The blizzard of baffling and confusing instructions and information that falls upon every child everywhere assumes a Carrollian texture.”
― Penelope Lively, A House Unlocked

“The Grand Tour was at its last gasp by 1900 but their trips to France and Italy, both then and later in my grandmother's life, exactly reflected the Tour's purpose and aspirations. You went abroad to look at art and architecture; such travel was essential education and improvement. I caught a last whiff of it myself in the late 1940s, towed round the Romanesque churches of central and southern France, my aunt determinedly seeking out every remote crumbling edifice, and my grandmother equipped with a supply of Ryvita, sandwich spread, Marmite and Ovaltine for the point when she could no longer endure unremitting French cuisine.”
― Penelope Lively, A House Unlocked

“The casual cruelty of early periods stemmed essentially from a perception of animals as being of a different order and thus not susceptible to suffering in the same way as people. It was the cruelty of indifference, rather than that of the witting infliction of pain. The sight of an animal in distress did not affect the onlooker. Indeed, the early arguments against activities which involved cruelty to animals focused not upon the feelings of the animal but upon the corrupting effect on the person involved – those accustomed to tormenting animals might go on to do the same to fellow humans.”
― Penelope Lively, A House Unlocked