A.S. Byatt

“Ang cute ni Lor!”

— A.S. Byatt

“...bleached by darkness”

— A.S. Byatt

“To a dusty shelf we aspire.”

— A.S. Byatt

“Did we not—did you not flame, and I catch fire?”

— A.S. Byatt

“…it will be possible, in the time of the wolf, to kill the gods.”

— A.S. Byatt

“Contemporary' was in those days [1953] synonymous with 'modern' as it had not been before and is not now [1977].”

— A.S. Byatt

“He invented a machine for reading underwater and nearly drowned in the bath because it worked.”

— A.S. Byatt

“No man has a right to dictate another man's inner life - the furniture inside his skull.”

— A.S. Byatt

“How true it was that one needed to be seen by others to be sure of one's own existence.”

— A.S. Byatt

“But now, my dear, we are here, we are now, and those other times are running elsewhere.”

— A.S. Byatt

“A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender it -…

— A.S. Byatt

“A metamorphosis... The shining butterfly of the soul from the pupa of the body. Larva, pupa, imago. An image of art.”

— A.S. Byatt

“The whole of our scholarship - the whole of our thought - we question everything except the centrality of sexuality.”

— A.S. Byatt

“You are a born storyteller," said the old lady. "You had the sense to see you were caught in a story, and…

— A.S. Byatt

“Olive Wellwood had the feeling writers often have when told perfect tales for fictions, that there was too much fact, too little…

— A.S. Byatt

“But I cannot love her as I did, because she is not open, because she withholds what matters, because she makes me,…

— A.S. Byatt

“This is where I have always been coming to. Since my time began. And when I go away from here, this will…

— A.S. Byatt

“He hesitated. “They were what stayed alive, when I’d been taught and examined everything else.” Maud smiled then. “Exactly. That’s it. What…

— A.S. Byatt

“He always told them the same thing, to begin with. ‘Try to avoid falseness and strain. Write what you really know about.…

— A.S. Byatt

“My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I…

— A.S. Byatt

“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

“And she was angry because she knew she was capable of many things she couldn't even define to herself, so they seemed…

— A.S. Byatt

“Julian was good at being in love. But he was clever enough to know that what he really liked about being in…

— A.S. Byatt

“...I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of being in love, which they regard as most particular, as inspired by…

— A.S. Byatt

“She grew up in the ordinary paradise of the English countryside. When she was five she walked to school, two miles, across…

— A.S. Byatt

“Maud considered. She said, 'In every age, there must be truths people can't fight - whether or not they want to, whether…

— A.S. Byatt

“Roland was so used to the pervasive sense of failure that he was unprepared for the blood-rush of success. He breathed differently.…

— A.S. Byatt

“There are readings—of the same text—that are dutiful, readings that map and dissect, readings that hear a rustling of unheard sounds, that…

— A.S. Byatt

“She thought human thoughts and stone thoughts. The latter were slow, patchily coloured, textured and extreme, both hot and cold. They did…

— A.S. Byatt

“He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.”

— A.S. Byatt

“All these are true and none. The place is there Is what we name it, and is not. It is .”

— A.S. Byatt

“All English stories get bogged down in whether or not the furniture is socially and aesthetically acceptable.”

— A.S. Byatt

“But poets don't want homes -- do they? -- they are not creatures of hearths and firedogs, but of heaths and ranging…

— A.S. Byatt

“We are a Faustian generation, my dear--we seek to know what we are maybe not designed (if we are designed) to be…

— A.S. Byatt

“She looked, quickly, quickly, it was better than before, thanked him and averted her eyes. She came to trust him with her…

— A.S. Byatt

“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

“She is afraid of divorce, which will free her, as she was not enough afraid of marriage, which trapped her.”

— a.s. byatt

“She was a thin, sickly, bony child, like an eft, with fine hair like sunlit smoke.”

— A.S. Byatt

“She was a thinking child, and worked this out. It hurt her, unlike most knowledge, which was strength and pleasure.”

— A.S. Byatt

“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not…

— A.S. Byatt