226 Quotes by A. S. Byatt

I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

Lists are a form of power.

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.

Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children.

There are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had never been.

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.

Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.

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