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No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.
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
Consumed
Possession
Mere
Stand
Fire
Human
Humans
More quotes by A. S. Byatt
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
A. S. Byatt
Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
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
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
Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.
A. S. Byatt
In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.
A. S. Byatt
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
A. S. Byatt
I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.
A. S. Byatt
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
A. S. Byatt
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.
A. S. Byatt
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.
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
Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.
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 think vestigially there's a synesthete in me but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.
A. S. Byatt
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.
A. S. Byatt
What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.
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
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
…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
