A. S. Byatt Quotes

A. S. Byatt is a highly acclaimed novelist known for her richly layered and intricate works of fiction. Her novels often explore themes of art, history, and the complexities of human relationships. Byatt's exquisite storytelling and attention to detail have garnered critical acclaim, making her a prominent figure in contemporary British literature.

I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.

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.

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness.

I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.

If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

It's a terrible poison, writing.... -A. S. Byatt

It's a terrible poison, writing.

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.

The true exercise of freedom is - cannily and wisely and with grace - to move inside what space confines - and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted.

What I need to write well is a combination of heat... -A. S. Byatt

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

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. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.

If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.

I'm more interested in books than people, and I al... -A. S. Byatt

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

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.

Where would we be without inhibitions? They're quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.

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

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.

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.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.

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.

I think there are a lot more important things than... -A. S. Byatt

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come together and they become the person they are.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

The point of painting is not really deception or i... -A. S. Byatt

The point of painting is not really deception or imitation.

For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for automatic bodily processes. A machine was man-made; it was not a sentient being; a man was not a machine.

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