A. S. Byatt

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

— A. S. Byatt

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good…

— A. S. Byatt

“He had been violently confused by her real presence in the opposite inaccessible corner. For months he had been possessed by the…

— A. S. Byatt

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.... storytelling is intrinsic to biological…

— A. S. Byatt

“Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro,…

— 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. S. Byatt

I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that…

— A. S. Byatt

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

— A. S. Byatt

Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into…

— 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

I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't…

— A. S. Byatt

“When the morning light came into the room it found them curled together in a nest of red and white sheets. It…

— A. S. Byatt

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

— A. S. Byatt

For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for…

— A. S. Byatt

I was no good at being a child.

— A. S. Byatt

I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed…

— A. S. Byatt

I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not…

— A. S. Byatt

“[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body…

— A. S. Byatt

You learn a lot about love before you ever get there. You learn at least as much about love from books as…

— A. S. Byatt

I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that…

— A. S. Byatt

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things…

— A. S. Byatt

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

— 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.

— A. S. Byatt

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it…

— 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.

— A. S. Byatt