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
lying book air
Do I do as false prophets do and puff air into simulacra? Am I a Sorcerer--like Macbeth's witches--mixing truth and lies in incandescent shapes? Or am I a kind of very minor scribe of a prophetic Book--telling such truth as in me lies, with aid of such fiction as I acknowledge mine, as Prospero acknowledged Caliban.
mind attention belief
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
reality talking scientist
One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.
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 .
work-out world fairytale
You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.
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.
safe mystery safe-places
Outside our small safe place flies mystery.
writing want and-love
I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.
book people
I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.
people listening age
Once you get older, people stop listening to what you say. It's very agreeable once you get used to it.
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.
action harm avert
Harm can come about without will or action. But will and action can avert harm.