“ We must come to grief and regret anyway - and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm,… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“The historian is an indissoluble part of his history, as the poet is of his poem, as the shadowy biographer is of… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Part of her wanted simply to sit and stare out of the window, at the lawn, flaky with sodden leaves, and the… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“No man has a right to dictate another man's inner life - the furniture inside his skull.” — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“ If there is a subject that is my own, my dear Ellen, as a writer I mean, it is the persistent… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“You know, all poetry may be a cry of generalised love, for this, or that, or the universe - which must be… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“There were times when [he] allowed himself to see clearly that he would end his working life, that was to say, his… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“How true it was that one needed to be seen by others to be sure of one's own existence.” — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“You are accompanied through life, Emily Jesse occasionally understood, not only by the beloved and accusing departed, but by your own ghost… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Above his head at street level, he saw an angled aileron of a scarlet Porsche, its jaunty fin more or less at the upper… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Why do you go cold?" He kept his voice gentle. "I - I've analysed it. Because I have the sort of good looks I… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“She was a thinking child, and worked this out. It hurt her, unlike most knowledge, which was strength and pleasure.” — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Those words . . . national and portrait. They were both to do with identity: the identity of a culture (place, language and history),… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“All these are true and none. The place is there Is what we name it, and is not. It is .” — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself. He thought… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“ We must come to grief and regret anyway - and I for one would rather regret the reality than its phantasm, knowledge than… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Roland had learned to see himself, theoretically, as a crossing-place for a number of systems, all loosely connected. He had been trained to see… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“She thought human thoughts and stone thoughts. The latter were slow, patchily coloured, textured and extreme, both hot and cold. They did not translate… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“She looked, quickly, quickly, it was better than before, thanked him and averted her eyes. She came to trust him with her disintegration.” — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
