A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy DBE– known as A. S. Byatt – 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...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth24 August 1936
world absence reason
I know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
war dark world
I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.
our-world brain mind
In our world of sleek flesh and collagen, Botox and liposuction, what we most fear is the dissolution of the body-mind, the death of the brain.
writing ease world
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
work-out world fairytale
You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.
running reality world
Louis de Bernires is in the direct line that runs through Dickens and Evelyn Waugh. . .he has only to look into his world, one senses, for it to rush into reality, colours and touch and taste.
children feelings world
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.
thinking reader
Think of this - that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other.
ice fire frost
Ice burns, and it is hard to the warm-skinned to distinguish one sensation, fire, from the other, frost.
best great teach women
If you want to teach women to be great writers, you should show them the best, and the best was often done by men. It was more often done by men than by women, if we're going to be truthful.
believe either god novelist tells work
If a novelist tells you something she knows or thinks, and you believe her, that is not because either of you think she is God, but because she is doing her work - as a novelist.
avoid failed interested mind quite simply
I'm quite interested in my own mental processes, simply because I'm a failed scientist, and because I'm interested in how the brain and the mind works, and I like to avoid easy descriptions.
children edge phantoms wander writers
I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children.
blocks care color forms metaphor painting people reduced
I like to write about painting because I think visually. I see my writing as blocks of color before it forms itself. I think I also care about painting because I'm not musical. Painting to me is not a metaphor for writing, but something people do that can never be reduced to words.