Quote

…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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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
Food
Carries
Words
Pulled
Afresh
Home
Carrie
Anew
Need
Burden
Spider
Must
Safety
Spin
Needs
Drink
Silk
Make
Design
Attacked
Life
Huge
Spiders

More quotes by A. S. Byatt

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I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.
A. S. Byatt
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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
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Where would we be without inhibitions? Theyre quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.
A. S. Byatt
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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
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…my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have.
A. S. Byatt
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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
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I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
A. S. Byatt
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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
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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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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
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One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
A. S. Byatt
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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.
A. S. Byatt
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Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
A. S. Byatt
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I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
A. S. Byatt
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What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.
A. S. Byatt
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Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
A. S. Byatt
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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.
A. S. Byatt
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I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.
A. S. Byatt
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I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.
A. S. Byatt
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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