A. S. Byatt

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 don't actually like books. ”

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends. ”

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. ”

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. ”

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

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. ”

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

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

Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules. ”

I have never been able to read Agatha Christie - the pleasure is purely in the puzzle, and the reader is toyed with by someone who didn't decide herself who the killer was until the end of the writing. ”