A. S. Byatt Quotes - Page 2

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• He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.

  A. S. Byatt

  Beautiful, Clouds, Flames

  A.S. Byatt (2011). “Ragnarok: the End of the Gods”, p.28, Canongate Books

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• I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

  A. S. Byatt

  Thinking, Curiosity, Virtue

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• I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

  A. S. Byatt

  Best Of Me, Possession, Creatures

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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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• 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

  Children, Book, Numbers

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• I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

  A. S. Byatt

  Writing, Literature, Ants

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• I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)

  A. S. Byatt

  Christian, Self, Worry

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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

  Book, Glasses, Ideas

  A S Byatt (2009). “The Children's Book”, p.119, Random House

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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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• There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

  A. S. Byatt

  Events, Would Be, Goes On

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Sep 30, 2011

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• In my mind's eye Shakespeare is a huge, hot sea-beast, with fire in his veins and ice on his claws and inscrutable eyes, who looks like an inchoate hump under the encrustations of live barnacle-commentaries, limpets and trailing weeds.

  A. S. Byatt

  Weed, Eye, Fire

  "Reading while you're wonder-wounded" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. June 21, 2002.

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

  A. S. Byatt

  Mind, Attention, Belief

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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 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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• I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.

  A. S. Byatt

  Hate, Thinking, Curiosity

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• One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.

  A. S. Byatt

  Doe, Loser, Remember

  "Lie back and think of Europe". www.theguardian.com. June 29, 2008.

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• An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.

  A. S. Byatt

  Heart, Add, Phrases

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Jun 07, 2011

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• Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

  A. S. Byatt

  Heartbreak, Pain, Suffering

  FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Dec 04, 2010

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• Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction.

  A. S. Byatt

  Lying, Self, Fiction

  "Sugar and Other Stories". Book by A. S. Byatt, 1987.

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• He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

  A. S. Byatt

  Changed, Felt

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

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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.

  A. S. Byatt

  Mean, Knowing, Fire

  A S Byatt (2012). “Possession: A Romance”, p.114, Random House

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• I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do.

  A. S. Byatt

  Self, Trying, Revealing

  "A.S. Byatt tells stories out of school". Interview with Todd Leopold, www.cnn.com. April 5, 2001.

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• 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. S. Byatt

  Girl, Teacher, Nice

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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.

  A. S. Byatt

  Dark, Night, Men

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

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