Do I do as false prophets do and puff air into simulacra? Am I a Sorcerer--like Macbeth's witches--mixing truth and lies in incandescent shapes? Or am I a kind of very minor scribe of a prophetic Book--telling such truth as in me lies, with aid of such fiction as I acknowledge mine, as Prospero acknowledged Caliban.
A. S. ByattIn England, everyone believes if you think, then you don't feel. But all my novels are about joining together thinking and feeling.
A. S. ByattI know that part of the reason I read Tolkien when I'm ill is that there is an almost total absence of sexuality in his world, which is restful.
A. S. ByattI am not an academic who happens to have written a novel. I am a novelist who happens to be quite good academically.
A. S. ByattI acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.
A. S. Byattโฆwords have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anewโฆ.
A. S. Byatt