Quote

The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended.

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
Artist
Live
Must
Work
Make
Intended
Never
Twice
Life
Reading
Eye

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For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth.
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Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.
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What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.
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In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.
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She devoured stories with rapacious greed, ranks of black marks on white, sorting themselves into mountains and trees, stars, moons and suns, dragons, dwarfs, and forests containing wolves, foxes and the dark.
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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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It's a terrible poison, writing.
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I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.
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I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
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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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One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
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Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.
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Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
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An odd phrase, by heart, he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.
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Young girls are sad. They like to be it makes them feel strong.
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When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.
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Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.
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I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.
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Good writing is always new.
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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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