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A. S. Byatt Biography

Dame Antonia Susan Duffy DBE HonFBA (née Drabble; born 24 August 1936), known professionally as A. S. Byatt (/ˈbaɪ.ət/ BY-ət), 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.

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A. S. Byatt Quotes

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side. . . He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

Beach, Comma, Curled, Dark, Night, Progression

…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….

Burden, Design, Drink, Home, Safety

…my Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have.

Peace, Solitude, Thing, Treasure

Everything is surprising, rightly seen.

Everything, Rightly, Seen, Surprising

Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.

Creative, Ridiculuous, Sublime, Ways, Writing

There is a peculiar aesthetic pleasure in constructing the form of a syllabus, or a book of essays, or a course of lectures. Visions and shadows of people and ideas can be arranged and rearranged like stained-glass pieces in a window, or chessmen on a board.

Book, Glasses, Ideas, Like, Rearranged, Syllabus

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

Events, Goes On, Leave, Subsequent, Things, Would Be

For my true thoughts have spent more time in your company than in anyone else's, these last two or three months, and where my thoughts are, there am I, in truth".

Company, Lasts, Months, Spent, Three, Two

Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.

Hops, Ink, Skip, Sudden, Writing

Cyclists. I really hate them. I wish they would not be so self-righteous and realise they are a danger to pedestrians. I wish cyclists would not vindictively snap off wing mirrors on cars when they were trying to cross in front of the car at a danger to motorists and pedestrians.

Car, Hate, Mirrors, Self, Snap

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

Book, Books, Everybody, Expect, People

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.

Book, Children, Number, Numbers, Surprising, Tell

Literary critics make natural detectives.

Critics, Detectives, Natural

You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.

Children, Feelings, Surprise, World

Don't you find it rather heavy, to have everything really in front of you – all the people who are going to matter, whom you haven't met yet, all the choices you are going to have to make, everything you might achieve, and all the possible failures – unreal now? The future flaps round my head like a cloud of midges.

Choices, Clouds, Flaps, Future, Matter, People

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself.

History, Men, Sense, Time, Writing

Things are not what they seem.

Deceived, Seems, Things, Things Are Not What They Seem

When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

Book, Books, Children, Life, Television, Wartime

I am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.

Academic, Academically, Happens, Novelists, Quite

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

And Love, Anywhere, Relative, Want, Write, Writing

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