“ It [In Memoriam] expressed exactly the nature of her own shock and sorrow, the very structure and slow process of pain, and the transformations and transmutations of grief, like rot in the earth-mould… A.S. Byatt
“ You are safe with me.""I am not at all safe, with you. But I have no desire to be elsewhere. A.S. Byatt
“ Without this excitement they cannot have their Lyric Verse, and so they get it by any convenient means -- and with absolute sincerity -- but the Poems are not for the young lady, the young lady is for… A.S. Byatt
“ What is it my dear?Ah, how can we bear it?Bear what?This. For so short a time. How can we sleep this time away?We can be quiet together, and pretend - since it is only the beginning - that we have all… A.S. Byatt
“ There will always be people who will slash open the other cheek when it is turned to them. A.S. Byatt
“ Most of all, he saw her waist, just where it narrowed, before the skirts spread. He remembered her nakedness as he knew it, and his hands around that narrowing. He thought of her momentarily as an hou… A.S. Byatt
“ Mine the long nightThe secret placeWhere lovers meetIn long embraceIn purple darkIn silvered kissForget the worldAnd grasp your bliss A.S. Byatt
“ In the morning the whole world had a strange new smell. It was the smell of the aftermath, a green smell, a smell of shredded leaves and oozing resin, of crushed wood and splashed sap, a tart smell, w… A.S. Byatt
“ He had been taught that language was essentially inadequate, that it could never speak what was there, that it only spoke itself.He thought about the death mask. He could and could not say that the ma… A.S. Byatt
“ And Swedenborg himself saw birds during his sojourns in the Spirit World and it was revealed to him that — in the Grand Man — rational concepts are seen as birds. Because the head corresponds to the h… A.S. Byatt
“ You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world. A.S. Byatt
“ You do not seem aware, for all of your knowledge of the great world I do not frequent, of the usual response which the productions of the Female Pen--let alone as in our case, the *hypothetick* produc… A.S. Byatt
“ You are accompanied through life, Emily Jesse occasionally understood, not only by the beloved and accusing departed, but by your own ghost too, also accusing, also unappeased. A.S. Byatt
“ There are things, also, that are memories as essential and structural as bones in toes and fingers. A.S. Byatt
“ The practitioners of ‘dry’ art admire myth and symbol, precision and coherence; they would, theoretically, be more excited by an interpretation of one of Shakespeare’s plays which offered them a beaut… A.S. Byatt
“ The class, on the other hand, buzzed and hummed with the anticipated pleasure of writing it up, one day. They were vindicated. Miss Fox belonged after all in the normal world of their writings, the wo… A.S. Byatt
“ Still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image we ourselves… A.S. Byatt
“ She said, the Puritan Milton, on the contrary, makes the moment of the Nativity the moment of the death of Nature—at least, he calls on the old tradition that Greek travellers heard the shrines cry ou… A.S. Byatt
“ She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the… A.S. Byatt
“ My Solitude is my Treasure, the best thing I have. I hesitate to go out. If you opened the little gate, I would not hop away—but oh how I sing in my gold cage. A.S. Byatt
