A. s. byatt

In England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.

One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.

There is a certain aesthetic pleasure in trying to imagine the unimaginable and failing, if you are a reader.

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

I always say I write my own novels and the characters don't take control of me, but in fact, I look at the characters in the early stages and I think, 'What is he or she like,' and they slowly come...

You learn a lot about love before you ever get there. You learn at least as much about love from books as you do from watching your parents.

America is full of readers of all different sorts who love books in many different ways, and I keep meeting them. And I think editors should look after them, and make less effort to please people who...

What I need to write well is a combination of heat, light and solitude.

When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.