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I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.
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
Like
Gurus
People
Independently
Guru
Follow
Asks
Believe
Think
Thinking
More quotes by A. S. Byatt
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.
A. S. Byatt
In my mind's eye Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds.
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
Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.
A. S. Byatt
I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
A. S. Byatt
A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.
A. S. Byatt
I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.
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
I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
A. S. Byatt
Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.
A. S. Byatt
Things are not what they seem.
A. S. Byatt
Young girls are sad. They like to be it makes them feel strong.
A. S. Byatt
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
A. S. Byatt
You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.
A. S. Byatt
I cannot bear not to know the end of a tale. I will read the most trivial things – once commenced – only out of a feverish greed to be able to swallow the ending – sweet or sour – and to be done with what I need never have embarked on. Are you in my case? Or are you a more discriminating reader? Do you lay aside the unprofitable?
A. S. Byatt
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
A. S. Byatt
One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.
A. S. Byatt
I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.
A. S. Byatt
Mine the long night The secret place Where lovers meet In long embrace In purple dark In silvered kiss Forget the world And grasp your bliss
A. S. Byatt
Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.
A. S. Byatt
