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Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
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
Never
Finally
Hold
Stop
Belief
Attention
Mind
Make
Paying
Things
Beliefs
More quotes by A. S. Byatt
What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.
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I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.
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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.
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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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I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.
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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
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 am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.
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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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It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.
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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.
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Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
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Lists are a form of power.
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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
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.
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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
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?
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The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.
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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.
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A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.
A. S. Byatt
