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This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.

A. S. Byatt is a writer in mid-career whose time has certainly come, because 'Possession' is a tour de force that opens every narrative device of English fiction to inspection without, for a moment, ceasing to delight.

I spent four years doing a doctorate in postmodern American literature. I can recognize it when I see it.

The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.

Translated poetry filled the no-man's-land between my own work and other writers', and I found this fascinating to explore.

I'm really interested in the new nonfiction. I think the hyper-digital culture has changed our brains in ways we cannot begin to fathom.

Whenever you're trying to do your own take on a classic piece of literature, it's almost like you're trying to swim up your own stream or drive down your own path.

I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.

It's not highly intellectual material. I'm dedicating it to the pulp fiction of the past.

The novel moves like all the arts. It's transforming itself all the time.