A. S. Byatt Thinking Quotations

I think vestigially there's a synesthete in me, but not like a real one who immediately knows what colour Wednesday is.

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.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity. If you look really hard at almost anybody, and try to see why they're doing what they're doing, taking a dig at them ceases to be what you want to do even if you hate them.

On buses and trains, I always think about the inexhaustible variety of human genes. We see types, and occasionally twins, but never doubles. All faces are unique, and this is exhilarating, despite the increasingly plastic similarity of TV stars and actors.

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.

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.

I think there are a lot more important things than art in the world. But not to me.

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

I don't see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.

I think the virtue I prize above all others is curiosity.

I think the names of colors are at the edge, between where language fails and where it's at its most powerful.

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