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
stars unique thinking
On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.
deceived things-are-not-what-they-seem seems
Things are not what they seem.
surprising
Everything is surprising, rightly seen.
wisdom community ephemeral
The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.
dark kissing night
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
stupid profound trying
I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along.
girl strong young
Young girls are sad. They like to be; it makes them feel strong.
looks useful-things humans
Where would we be without inhibitions? Theyre quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.
writing poison terrible
It's a terrible poison, writing.
narrative
Narrative is one of the best intoxicants or tranquilisers.
imagination feminist make-me-angry
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
hair mind amber
The minds of stone lovers had colonised stones as lichens clung to them with golden or grey-green florid stains. The human world of stones is caught in organic metaphors like flies in amber. Words came from flesh and hair and plants. Reniform, mammilated, botryoidal, dendrite, haematite. Carnelian is from carnal, from flesh. Serpentine and lizardite are stone reptiles ; phyllite is leafy-green.
way study chaps
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
art simple together
Our days weave together the simple pleasures of daily life, which we should never take for granted, and the higher pleasures of Art and Thought which we may now taste as we please, with none to forbid or criticise.