In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don’t feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won’t be complete women. I don’t think my daughters’ generation has that feeling. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I did a lot of my writing as though I was an academic, doing some piece of research as perfectly as possible. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 better than I know my husband. A. S. Byatt Read Quote
