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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
Power
Lists
Form

More quotes by A. S. Byatt

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He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.
A. S. Byatt
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Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.
A. S. Byatt
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I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
A. S. Byatt
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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
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Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.
A. S. Byatt
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Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
A. S. Byatt
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Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.
A. S. Byatt
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Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.
A. S. Byatt
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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.
A. S. Byatt
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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.
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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There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
A. S. Byatt
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We two remake our world by naming it / Together, knowing what words mean for us / And for the other for whom current coin / Is cold speech - but we say, the tree, the pool, / And see the fire in the air, the sun, our sun, / Anybody's sun, the world's sun, but here, now / Particularly our sun.
A. S. Byatt
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Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
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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It's a terrible poison, writing.
A. S. Byatt
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I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
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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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.
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