Quote

Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.

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
Sensation
Sensations
Ice
Warm
Fire
Skinned
Hard
Frost
Burns
Distinguish

More quotes by A. S. Byatt

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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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Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.
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Lists are a form of power.
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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.
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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.
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Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
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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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There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
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I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
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Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.
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As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.
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I don't only write about English literature I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
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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
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I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
A. S. Byatt
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…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….
A. S. Byatt
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You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.
A. S. Byatt
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Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.
A. S. Byatt
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History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.
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Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.
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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
A. S. Byatt