Quote

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

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
Written
Indifferently
Though
Discernible
Wrong
Subsequent
Happens
Trace
Things
Spoken
Never
Events
Would
Leave
Happen

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Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.
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You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.
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I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.
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Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
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Good writing is always new.
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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.
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Young girls are sad. They like to be it makes them feel strong.
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I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.
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I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.
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I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
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I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.
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Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.
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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.
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One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
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It's a terrible poison, writing.
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I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.
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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
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I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.
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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.
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Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.
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