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A. S. Byatt

English,  Novelist
Total Quotes : 65
Work Always Very

I don't understand why, in my work, writing is always so dangerous. It's very destructive. People who write books are destroyers.

- A. S. Byatt

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Nothing About Had

I hated being a novelist when I was 20 - I had nothing to write about.

- A. S. Byatt

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Think I Think Like

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

- A. S. Byatt

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Want More Going

If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.

- A. S. Byatt

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Love Show Stories

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends.

- A. S. Byatt

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Chaos Ants About

I don't only write about English literature; I also write about chaos theory and... ants. I can understand ants.

- A. S. Byatt

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Always More Everybody

I'm more interested in books than people, and I always expect everybody else to be, but they're not.

- A. S. Byatt

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Think I Think Sympathetic

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.

- A. S. Byatt

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Doing I Think Dig

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.

- A. S. Byatt

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Tell Other Almost

As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

- A. S. Byatt

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About Increasingly TV

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

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Kind Give Shape

Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape.

- A. S. Byatt

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Deep Always Very

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred.

- A. S. Byatt

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Color I Think Before

I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.

- A. S. Byatt

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Like Write Paints

I'd like to write the way Matisse paints.

- A. S. Byatt

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Think Like Ask

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.

- A. S. Byatt

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Injustice About Capital

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.

- A. S. Byatt

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Understand Which Use

You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.

- A. S. Byatt

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Love Learn Before

You learn a lot about love before you ever get there. You learn at least as much about love from books as you do from watching your parents.

- A. S. Byatt

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Love Effort I Think

America is full of readers of all different sorts who love books in many different ways, and I keep meeting them. And I think editors should look after them, and make less effort to please people who don't actually like books.

- A. S. Byatt

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