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A. S. Byatt


English
August 24, 1936
Novelist
sun sea afternoon sunset sky
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.


A. S. Byatt
Tags: Because Love Us
I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.
A. S. Byatt
Tags: About Only Also
Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.
A. S. Byatt
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.
A. S. Byatt
Tags: You Them Would
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.
A. S. Byatt
Tags: About Them Thing
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.
A. S. Byatt
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.
A. S. Byatt
Tags: About World Where
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.
A. S. Byatt
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.
A. S. Byatt
Tags: Change You About