A. S. Byatt Quotes

Quotes about:

Art Books Children Desire Feelings Human Nature Language

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

A. S. Byatt

Change, Book, People

FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Jan 14, 2011

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They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

A. S. Byatt

Beach, Dark, Night

FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from May 22, 2013

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Outside our small safe place flies mystery.

A. S. Byatt

Safe, Mystery, Safe Places

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Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.... storytelling is intrinsic to biological time, which we cannot escape. Life, Pascal said, is like living in a prison from which every day fellow prisoners are taken away to be executed. We are all, like Scheherazade, under sentence of death, and we all think of our lives as narratives, with beginnings, middles and ends.

A. S. Byatt

Taken, Thinking, Blood

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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

Thinking, Reader

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Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

A. S. Byatt

Stories, Love Story, Ends

"A comforting way of death" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. November 8, 2002.

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Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

A. S. Byatt

Blood, Human Nature, Circulation

"Best Story; Narrate Or Die" by A.S. Byatt, www.nytimes.com. April 18, 1999.

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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.

A. S. Byatt

People, Listening, Age

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No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

A. S. Byatt

Fire, Possession, Humans

"Possession". www.imdb.com. 2002.

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I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

A. S. Byatt

Powerful, Thinking, Color

FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Dec 16, 2011

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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.

A. S. Byatt

Believe, Thinking, People

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Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

A. S. Byatt

Dream, Song, Morning

FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Aug 27, 2011

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Everything is surprising, rightly seen.

A. S. Byatt

Surprising

A. S. Byatt (2012). “Angels & Insects: Two Novellas”, p.183, Vintage

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…my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have.

A. S. Byatt

Peace, Solitude, Treasure

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Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

A. S. Byatt

Art, Doe, Pleasure

FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Jun 30, 2010

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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.

A. S. Byatt

Work Out, Use, World

"Writing a tale" by Sarah Gooderson, www.theguardian.com. September 22, 2005.

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I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

A. S. Byatt

Book, People

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Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.

A. S. Byatt

Book, Later In Life, Giving

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Lists are a form of power.

A. S. Byatt

Lists, Form

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…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

Home, Safety, Design

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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.

A. S. Byatt

Greatness, Secret, Balance

"An artificial paradise" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. February 20, 2004.

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I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

A. S. Byatt

War, Dark, World

"Happy ever after" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. January 3, 2004.

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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.

A. S. Byatt

Children, Nice, Son

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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

Art, Thinking, Important

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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.

A. S. Byatt

Real, Thinking, Colour

"AS Byatt: woman of letters and ...science!". "All In The Mind" with Antonia Byatt, www.abc.net.au. August 21, 2010.

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Born: August 24, 1936
Occupation: Novelist
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