A. S. Byatt

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

There are things I take sides about, like capital punishment, which it seems to me there is only one side about: it is evil. But there are two or three sides to sexual harassment, and the moment you get into particular cases, there is injustice in every conceivable direction. It's a mess. ”

The true exercise of freedom is - cannily and wisely and with grace - to move inside what space confines - and not seek to know what lies beyond and cannot be touched or tasted. ”

I think that most of the children's writers live in the world that they've created, and their children are kind of phantoms that wander around the edge of it in the world, but actually the children's writers are the children. ”

Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs. ”

I'm not very interested in myself. I do have a deep moral belief that you should always look out at other things and not be self-centred. ”

Books that change you, even later in life, give you a kind of electrical shock as the world takes a different shape. ”

I am a profound pessimist both about life and about human relations and about politics and ecology. Humans are inadequate and stupid creatures who sooner or later make a mess, and those who are trying to do good do a lot more damage than those who are muddling along. ”

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. ”

Where would we be without inhibitions? They're quite useful things when you look at some of the things humans do if they lose them. ”