English - Novelist | August 24, 1936 -
I think my characters with my fingers, I think my characters with my guts. But when I say I think them, that is what I do, I feel them with the sympathetic neurons and I work out with my brain what it is that I am trying to write about, or I can't do it.
A. S. Byatt
WorkI AmBrainThinkFeelTrying
I'm quite interested in my own mental processes, simply because I'm a failed scientist, and because I'm interested in how the brain and the mind works, and I like to avoid easy descriptions.
MindBrainEasyMy OwnMentalOwn
I find the attempt to find things out, which scientists are possessed by, to be as human as breathing, or feeding, or sex. And so the science has to be in the novels as science and not just as metaphors.
ScienceSexFindHumanBreathing
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
WomenAngryMeStandBecauseReally
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.
LoveParentsLearnYouWatchingGet
I like feeling my way into different minds and experiences. It comes naturally and always has.
FeelingWayMindsAlwaysExperiences
I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it's because I grew up on a love of history, philosophy, science and religion, but not to think too much about yourself.
LoveScienceHistoryTimeReligion
I have a dreadful fear that the more you try to prevent revealing the self, the more you do.
FearSelfYouTryMorePrevent
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.
GoodTogetherThinkLanguageEnglish
One of the reasons I've gotten so attached to talking to scientists is that... they know there is a reality.
RealityTalkingKnowReasonsGotten
You learn different things through fiction. Historians are always making a plot about how certain things came to happen. Whereas a novelist looks at tiny little things and builds up a sort of map, like a painting, so that you see the shapes of things.
PaintingLittle ThingsLearnYouMap
I am suspicious of writers who go looking for issues to address. Writers are neither preachers nor journalists. Journalists know much more than most writers about what's going on in the world. And if you want to change things, you do journalism.
ChangeI AmWorldLookingYouKnow
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