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65 quotes by A. S. Byatt

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

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My professional and human obsession is the nature of language, and my best relationships are with other writers. In many ways, I know George Eliot... →

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On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All... →

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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.... →

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A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were... →

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I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most... →

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I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't... →

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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... →

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You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at... →

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I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to... →

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I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it's because I grew up on a love of history... →

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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... →

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

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