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
hate thinking curiosity
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.
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.
believe thinking people
I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.
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.
sports thinking games
I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.
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.
art thinking important
I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.
thinking curiosity virtue
I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.
believe thinking feelings
In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.
real thinking colour
I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.
powerful thinking names
I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.
thinking reader
Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
biography history needs novelist opposed writer
Reading a newspaper is like reading someone's letters, as opposed to a biography or a history. The writer really does not know what will happen. A novelist needs to feel what that is like.
clever clues death gruesome packaged playing pleasure puzzle reduced revealed solution
Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.