Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Mary Fitzgerald (17 December 1916 – 28 April 2000) was a Booker Prize-winning English novelist, poet, essayist and biographer. Fitzgerald was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1978, for her novel The Bookshop; and won the Booker prize in 1979 for her work, Offshore. Quotes When I was young I took my father and my three uncles for granted, and it never occurred to me that everyone else wasn't like them. Later on, I found that this was a mistake, but I've never quite managed to adapt myself to it. I suppose they were unusual, but I still think that they were right, and insofar as the world disagrees with them, I disagree with the world. The Afterlife (New York: Counterpoint, 2003), 1-58243-198-1, "Curriculum Vitae", p. 338. Referring to E. V. Knox, Ronald Knox, Dilly Knox, and Wilfred Knox The Bookshop (1978) The frame of mind, however, is everything. Given that, one can have a very satisfactory party all by oneself. Ch. 4 Human Voices (1980) Helping other people is a drug so dangerous that there is no cure short of total abstention. Ch. 9 Innocence (1986) There are dilettantes in human relationships just as there are, let's say, in politics. Ch. 32 He struggled to keep his temper. It struck him that both Marta and Chiara took advantage of him by attacking him with their ignorance, or call it innocence. A serious thinking adult had no defence against innocence because he was obliged to respect it, whereas the innocent scarcely knows what respect is, or seriousness either. Ch. 41 The Gate of Angels (1990) If they don't depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips. Ch. 3 (Flowerdew) No two people see the external world in exactly the same way. To every separate person a thing is what he thinks it is — in other words, not a thing, but a think. Ch. 6 (Shippey) It's very good for an idea to be commonplace. The important thing is that a new idea should develop out of what is already there so that it soon becomes an old acquaintance. Old acquaintances aren't by any means always welcome, but at least one can't be mistaken as to who or what they are. Ch. 20 (Fred Fairly) External links "Penelope Fitzgerald", by Harriet Harvey-Wood, The Guardian, May 3, 2000. "How did she do it?", Julian Barnes, The Guardian, July 26, 2008 "The Unknown Penelope Fitzgerald", Edmund Gordon,TLS, June 30, 2010 "Fitzgerald, Penelope", Britannica Student Encyclopedia (2006). Meet the Writers: Penelope Fitzgerald, Barnes and Noble. penelope&query-join=and Penelope Fitzgerald Collection, Additional Papers at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin "Penelope Fitzgerald: Dedicated to Her Life and Work" Category:Poets from England Category:Biographers from England Category:Booker Prize winners Category:Novelists from England Category:Essayists from England Category:Women authors from England Category:1916 births Category:2000 deaths Category:University of Oxford alumni