226 Quotes by A. S. Byatt

History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...

As for Fergus. He had a habit which Maud was not experienced enough to recognise as a common one in ex-lovers of giving little tugs at the carefully severed spider-threads or puppet-strings which had once tied her to him.

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

They did go on so, don't you think, those Victorian poets, they took themselves so horribly seriously," he said, pushing the lift button, summoning it from the depths.As it creaked up, Blackadder said, "That's not the worst thing a human being can do, take himself seriously.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.

[H]is mouth pursed, but pursed in American, more generous than English pursing, ready for broader vowels and less mincing sounds. His body was long and lean and trim; he had American hips, ready for a neat belt and the faraway ghost of a gunbelt.

Pedro of Portugal's rapt and bizarre declaration of love, in 1356, for the embalmed corpse of his murdered wife, Inez de Castro, who swayed beside him on his travels, leather-brown and skeletal, crowned with lace and gold circlet, hung about with chains of diamonds and pearls, her bone-fingers fantastically ringed.

And you say—so kind you are—“I love you. I love you.”—and I believe—but who is she—who is “you”?

It is odd, when I think of it, that in chess the female may make the large runs and cross freely in all ways—in life it is much otherwise.