"It seems to me that everything that happens to us is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency"
About this Quote
Penelope Lively distills a lifelong preoccupation: the uneasy braid of agency and accident. To say that everything that happens is a disconcerting mix of choice and contingency is to reject both fatalism and the fantasy of total control. We steer, but currents we did not summon carry us. That disconcerting quality lies in the way responsibility and luck intertwine so tightly that praise, blame, and self-understanding never feel tidy.
Livelys fiction returns to this tension again and again. In Moon Tiger, personal memories collide with the vast contingencies of war and history, showing how a single life is shaped as much by world events as by private decisions. How It All Began opens with a random mugging that triggers a cascade of consequences, rippling into the lives of people only loosely connected to the initial event. Making It Up plays with counterfactuals, sketching the alternative lives that could have unfolded had small moments tipped another way. Her background in history and archaeology sharpens this vision: lives are like layered sites, where deliberate constructions sit alongside fragments left by accident, erosion, and chance preservation.
The phrase everything that happens to us also insists on the porous boundary between actor and recipient. Things happen to us as well as because of us. Philosophers call this moral luck: outcomes that define a life depend on circumstances outside anyones control, even as we remain answerable for our choices within them. The friction between these truths unsettles certainty. It complicates judgment, humbles ambition, and yet energizes the will, because choices still matter, even amid contingency.
Livelys narrative structures mirror this insight: nonlinear timelines, multiple perspectives, and sudden pivots that reveal how the improbable becomes decisive. Her work invites a stance of lucid acceptance. Make choices with care, knowing they travel through a world of flukes and forces. Recognize how much of any story is edited after the fact to look inevitable. In that recognition lies empathy for others, patience with oneself, and a bracing respect for the randomness that keeps life vivid.
Livelys fiction returns to this tension again and again. In Moon Tiger, personal memories collide with the vast contingencies of war and history, showing how a single life is shaped as much by world events as by private decisions. How It All Began opens with a random mugging that triggers a cascade of consequences, rippling into the lives of people only loosely connected to the initial event. Making It Up plays with counterfactuals, sketching the alternative lives that could have unfolded had small moments tipped another way. Her background in history and archaeology sharpens this vision: lives are like layered sites, where deliberate constructions sit alongside fragments left by accident, erosion, and chance preservation.
The phrase everything that happens to us also insists on the porous boundary between actor and recipient. Things happen to us as well as because of us. Philosophers call this moral luck: outcomes that define a life depend on circumstances outside anyones control, even as we remain answerable for our choices within them. The friction between these truths unsettles certainty. It complicates judgment, humbles ambition, and yet energizes the will, because choices still matter, even amid contingency.
Livelys narrative structures mirror this insight: nonlinear timelines, multiple perspectives, and sudden pivots that reveal how the improbable becomes decisive. Her work invites a stance of lucid acceptance. Make choices with care, knowing they travel through a world of flukes and forces. Recognize how much of any story is edited after the fact to look inevitable. In that recognition lies empathy for others, patience with oneself, and a bracing respect for the randomness that keeps life vivid.
Quote Details
| Topic | Free Will & Fate |
|---|
More Quotes by Penelope
Add to List
