All A. S. Byatt Quotes
- Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost. Burns
- No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed. Consumed
- I cannot bear not to know the end of a tale. I will read the most trivial things – once commenced – only out of… Able
- …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… Afresh
- Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by. Choose
- They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm.… Ankle
- Mine the long night The secret place Where lovers meet In long embrace In purple dark In silvered kiss Forget the world And grasp your… Bliss
- Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs… Appearance
- Dorothy was in that state human beings passed through at the beginning of a love affair, in which they desire to say anything and everything… Accept
- …my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. Best
- She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she… Analytically
- You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise… Childish
- Lists are a form of power. Form
- 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… Aesthetic
- Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that. Both
- You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a… Annihilating
- ...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings… Already Know
- Literary critics make natural detectives. Critics
- A beautiful woman, Simone Weil said, seeing herself in the mirror, knows "This is I." An ugly woman knows with equal certainty, "This is not… Beautiful
- History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself... History
- I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me. Best
- He felt changed, but there was no one to tell. Changed
- 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… Dark
- An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream. Add
- I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.) Account