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
trying failing imagine
There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.
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.
self trying revealing
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.
neurons trying work
I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.
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.
bodily maybe respecting talk
We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness.
humans
Where would we be without inhibitions? They're quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them.
bodies either general longer novels spirit
In novels in general - and also on the television - we do live in a world where bodies is what we are. We do not talk about the spirit or the soul, and there is a sense that we no longer talk about beliefs, either Freudian or Marxist.
central children ensures fact fairy good mostly simply sure tales telling
I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.
change issues neither nor preachers suspicious writers
I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.
capital particular seems sexual sides three
There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess.
automatic bodily felt irritated man repelled time word
For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for automatic bodily processes. A machine was man-made; it was not a sentient being; a man was not a machine.
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.