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I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.
A. S. Byatt
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A. S. Byatt
Age: 88
Born: 1936
Born: August 24
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Sheffield
England
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy
Antonia Susan Drabble
Antonia Susan Duffy
Hunger
Second
Days
Blackout
Dark
Blackouts
War
Blitz
World
Acquired
Fairy
Tales
More quotes by A. S. Byatt
Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. Falling in love, characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.
A. S. Byatt
There are many ways of writing badly about painting... There is an 'appreciative' language of threadbare, not inaccurate, but overexposed and irritating words... the language of the schools which 'situates' works and artists in schools and movements... novelists and poets [that] see paintings as allegories of writing.
A. S. Byatt
It's a terrible poison, writing.
A. S. Byatt
In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.
A. S. Byatt
It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.
A. S. Byatt
Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.
A. S. Byatt
Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
A. S. Byatt
Cyclists. I really hate them. I wish they would not be so self-righteous and realise they are a danger to pedestrians. I wish cyclists would not vindictively snap off wing mirrors on cars when they were trying to cross in front of the car at a danger to motorists and pedestrians.
A. S. Byatt
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
A. S. Byatt
She devoured stories with rapacious greed, ranks of black marks on white, sorting themselves into mountains and trees, stars, moons and suns, dragons, dwarfs, and forests containing wolves, foxes and the dark.
A. S. Byatt
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
A. S. Byatt
The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.
A. S. Byatt
You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.
A. S. Byatt
I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
A. S. Byatt
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
A. S. Byatt
Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.
A. S. Byatt
Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
A. S. Byatt
Outside our small safe place flies mystery.
A. S. Byatt
Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.
A. S. Byatt
Everything is surprising, rightly seen.
A. S. Byatt
