A. S. Byatt Love Quotations

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

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.

I sort of mind living in a time when most of the literature is terribly personal. I suppose it's because I grew up on a love of history, philosophy, science and religion, but not to think too much about yourself.

America is full of readers of all different sorts who love books in many different ways, and I keep meeting them. And I think editors should look after them, and make less effort to please people who don't actually like books.

Coherence and closure are deep human desires that are presently unfashionable. But they are always both frightening and enchantingly desirable. "Falling in love," characteristically, combs the appearances of the word, and of the particular lover's history, out of a random tangle and into a coherent plot.

I do not want to be a relative and passive being, anywhere. I want to live and love and write.