A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy DBE– known as A. S. Byatt – is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner. In 2008, The Times newspaper named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1936
thinking people palaces
I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.
writing want and-love
I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.
safe mystery safe-places
Outside our small safe place flies mystery.
independent independent-women men
Independent women must expect more of themselves, since neither men nor other more conventionally domesticated women will hope for anything, or expect any result other than utter failure.
writing ease world
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
lying self fiction
Autobiographies tell more lies than all but the most self-indulgent fiction .
stars dark moon
She devoured stories with rapacious greed, ranks of black marks on white, sorting themselves into mountains and trees, stars, moons and suns, dragons, dwarfs, and forests containing wolves, foxes and the dark.
doe remember loser
One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.
children book numbers
A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.
writing good-writing
Good writing is always new.
mind attention belief
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
writing ants literature
I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
writing thinking venus
I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite.
writing novelists hated
I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.