Quote

I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.

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
Need
Constructing
Needs
Palaces
Much
Joke
Every
Jokes
Things
Spend
Think
Pure
Thinking
Point
People
Lives

More quotes by A. S. Byatt

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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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Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.
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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.
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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 like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
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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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It's a terrible poison, writing.
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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.
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Literary critics make natural detectives.
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Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.
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Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
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There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
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I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
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?
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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.
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Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.
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On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.
A. S. Byatt
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Well, I would hardly say I do write as yet. But I write because I like words. I suppose if I liked stone I might carve. I like words. I like reading. I notice particular words. That sets me off.
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I don't only write about English literature I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
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Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
A. S. Byatt