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There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

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
Pieces
Board
Rearranged
People
Vision
Boards
Constructing
Courses
Aesthetic
Stained
Course
Peculiar
Arranged
Pleasure
Glass
Visions
Form
Glasses
Lectures
Ideas
Shadow
Essays
Book
Window
Shadows
Syllabus

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Literary critics make natural detectives.
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I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
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A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows This is I. An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, This is not I. Maud knew this neat division represented an over-simplification. The doll-mask she saw had nothing to do with her, nothing.
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I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible.
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Lists are a form of power.
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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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Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
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Everything is surprising, rightly seen.
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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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Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.
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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.
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An odd phrase, by heart, he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.
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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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Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
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You are safe with me. I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere.
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Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.
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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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History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.
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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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