Everybody needs, as it were, an unreal world to complete the real world.
A.S. Byatt, Interview
What makes me a Poet, and not a novelist--is to do with the singing of the Language itself. For the difference between poets and novelists is this--that the former write for the life of the language--and the latter write for the betterment of the world.
Possession by A.S Byatt
They were what stayed alive, when I'd been taught and examined everything else.
Possession by A.S. Byatt
He showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it.
Possession by A.S. Byatt
An odd phrase, 'by heart,' he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.
Possession by A.S. Byatt