Quote

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

A. S. Byatt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Mind
Make
Paying
Things
Beliefs
Never
Finally
Hold
Stop
Belief
Attention

More quotes by A. S. Byatt

Image
I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.
A. S. Byatt
Image
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
A. S. Byatt
Image
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.
A. S. Byatt
Image
Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
A. S. Byatt
Image
That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.
A. S. Byatt
Image
She was a logical child, as far as children go. She did not understand how such a nice, kind, good God as the one they preyed to, could condemn the whole earth for sinfulness and flood it, or condemn his only Son to a disgusting death on behalf of everyone. This death did not seem to have done much good.
A. S. Byatt
Image
Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.
A. S. Byatt
Image
I don't only write about English literature I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
A. S. Byatt
Image
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
Image
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.
A. S. Byatt
Image
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
Image
Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.
A. S. Byatt
Image
…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
Image
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
A. S. Byatt
Image
Lists are a form of power.
A. S. Byatt
Image
You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.
A. S. Byatt
Image
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
Image
One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
A. S. Byatt
Image
I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.
A. S. Byatt
Image
Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything to the beloved, to the alter ego, before they have learned what the real Other can and can't understand, can and can't accept.
A. S. Byatt