A. S. Byatt quotes

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)
Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war. View quote
A. S. Byatt
Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is. View quote
A. S. Byatt
Despite the snow, despite the falling snow. View quote
A. S. Byatt
And where may hide what came and loved our clay? as the Poet asked finely. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I shall from time to time write a small Clue - so that you may be the more thoroughly confounded. View quote
A. S. Byatt
...my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. View quote
A. S. Byatt
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not. (A. S. Byatt)
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self the more you do. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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. View quote
A. S. Byatt
When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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)
You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in. View quote
A. S. Byatt
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. View quote
A. S. Byatt
I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers. View quote
A. S. Byatt
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry. View quote
A. S. Byatt