I don't think it is an easy thing to write and expect to be commercial, even if you are from Venus and a hermaphrodite. A. S. Byatt More Quotes by A. S. Byatt More Quotes From A. S. Byatt 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. A. S. Byatt research ease writing I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live - I don't think I've ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up. A. S. Byatt games sports thinking Good writing is always new. A. S. Byatt good-writing writing Outside our small safe place flies mystery. A. S. Byatt safe-places mystery safe I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write. A. S. Byatt and-love want writing Where would we be without inhibitions? Theyre quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them. A. S. Byatt useful-things humans looks 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 daughter mother book For a long time, I felt instinctively irritated - sometimes repelled - by scientific friends' automatic use of the word 'mechanism' for automatic bodily processes. A machine was man-made; it was not a sentient being; a man was not a machine. A. S. Byatt man friends time long 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. A. S. Byatt you god work believe There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess. A. S. Byatt me moment you evil I think literary theory has not been terribly good for English studies in a while. It's not that theory isn't interesting, but it isn't about books, or the idiosyncrasies and complexities of putting language together. A. S. Byatt good think language together 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 feel someone reading history The point of painting is not really deception or imitation. A. S. Byatt point imitation painting deception 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. A. S. Byatt live soul television world We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness. A. S. Byatt talk kindness feelings sex
