“Blackadder was fifty-four and had come to editing Ash out of pique. He was the son and grandson of Scottish schoolmasters. His… — 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
“I hit on something I believe when I wrote that I meant to be a Poet and a Poem. It may be… — 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
“But poets don't want homes -- do they? -- they are not creatures of hearths and firedogs, but of heaths and ranging… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Without this excitement they cannot have their Lyric Verse, and so they get it by any convenient means -- and with absolute… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously?' he said, pushing the lift… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“Here Carlyle had come, here George Eliot had progressed through the bookshelves. Roland could see her black silk skirts, her velvet trains,… — A.S. Byatt Copy Share Image
“So—I went on, on my own—deeper and deeper into the silent Tunnel of the Ride—not so sure of where I was and… — 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
