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 Read Quote
You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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 Read Quote
