A. S. Byatt Quotes, Thinking Quotes

Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Thinking Quotes

What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Change Quotes , Book Quotes

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.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Self Quotes , Looks Quotes

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Powerful Quotes , Thinking Quotes

He felt changed, but there was no one to tell.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Changed Quotes

Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Dream Quotes , Song Quotes

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

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Book Quotes

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.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Hate Quotes , Thinking Quotes

Narration is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of the blood.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Blood Quotes , Human Nature Quotes

He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Beautiful Quotes , Clouds Quotes

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Thinking Quotes , Curiosity Quotes

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Greatness Quotes , Secret Quotes

One does not remember the winners. One remains haunted by the losers.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Doe Quotes , Loser Quotes

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Art Quotes , Thinking Quotes

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Mind Quotes , Attention Quotes

I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Best Of Me Quotes , Possession Quotes

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

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Real Quotes , Thinking Quotes

Lists are a form of power.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Lists Quotes

No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Fire Quotes , Possession Quotes

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.

4 years ago

Message Copied

Tags : A. S. Byatt Quotes , Book Quotes , Glasses Quotes