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I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
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
Read
Part
Tolkien
Reason
Restful
World
Sexuality
Ill
Total
Absence
Almost
More quotes by A. S. Byatt
There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.
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On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.
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I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.
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
Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.
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For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth.
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
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.
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It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
A. S. Byatt
One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
A. S. Byatt
Outside our small safe place flies mystery.
A. S. Byatt
Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.
A. S. Byatt
No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.
A. S. Byatt
That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.
A. S. Byatt
Young girls are sad. They like to be it makes them feel strong.
A. S. Byatt
Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.
A. S. Byatt
I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.
A. S. Byatt
Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
A. S. Byatt
What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.
A. S. Byatt
They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.
A. S. Byatt