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

I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.

From A. S. Byatt

The point of painting is not really deception or imitation.

From A. S. Byatt

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.

From A. S. Byatt

I don't like gurus. I don't like people who ask you to follow or believe. I like people who ask you to think independently.

From A. S. Byatt

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

From A. S. Byatt

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.

From A. S. Byatt

Biographies are no longer written to explain or explore the greatness of the great. They redress balances, explore secret weaknesses, demolish legends.

From A. S. Byatt

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.

From A. S. Byatt

As a little girl, I didn't like stories about little girls. I liked stories about dragons and beasts and princes and princesses and fear and terror and the Four Musketeers and almost anything other than nice little girls making moral decisions about whether to tell the teacher about what the other little girl did or did not do.

From A. S. Byatt

A. S. Byatt

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