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52fbac6
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Pomona's Tom's age and lucky enough to be as pretty as her name--so dangerous, don't you think, giving romantic names to little scraps who may grow up as plain as doorposts.
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A.S. Byatt |
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e13ec7f
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I have always believed I cd diagnose this state of which they regard as as inspired by one pair of black eyes or indifferent blue, one graceful attitude of body or mind, one female history of some twenty-two years from, shall we say, 1821-1844--I have always believed this to be something of the masking itself under the particular forms of both lover and beloved. And Poet, who assumes and informs both. I wd have told you--no, I..
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love
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A.S. Byatt |
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11bfff7
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His mother was a good and fearful Lutheran, who gave away both time and money, visiting hospitals for the poor, organising bazaars and clothing collections. But she ate from Meissen porcelain with silver spoons. There were hideous inconsistencies.
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A.S. Byatt |
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fbaddf2
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I wanted to be a Poet and a Poem, and now am neither,
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A.S. Byatt |
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23247a3
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No two faces are the same; this endless human diversity is one of the more hopeful things about the preponderant species on the planet.
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A.S. Byatt |
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97dfdec
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I do love you, my Florence. Will you always be so sensible?" "No. I quite expect to become very silly as I grow older. Everyone seems to."
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A.S. Byatt |
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9402ca4
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Dorothy looked at everything as though it might vanish. The bright daily pottery, the spice-jars, the sweep of the staircase, the pigeons in the stable yard. What had been real was now like a thick film, a coloured oilcloth, spread over a cauldron of vapours which shaped and reshaped themselves into shadowy forms, embracing, threatening, glaring.
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A.S. Byatt |
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81e0f98
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Being as I am both a woman and working-class, choice don't come into it, much, for me. I do what I must." Charles/Karl wanted to say he was sorry, and couldn't. "I imagine you don't talk to many of us, as against studying us in bulk. The dangerous masses. To be put in camps, and set to work on projects." "You are being unfair," said Charles/Karl. "You are mocking me." "We can do that, at least, if we dare." "Miss Warren," said Charles/Karl,..
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A.S. Byatt |
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65d29d4
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Maud laughed, drily. Roland said, "And then, really, what is it, what is this arcane power we have, when we see that everything is human sexuality? It's really powerlessness." Impotence," said Maud, leaning over, interested. I was avoiding that word, because that precisely We are so knowing. And all we've found out, is primitive sympathetic magic. Infantile polymorphous perversity. Everything relates to
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A.S. Byatt |
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113b42f
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She was called Maria. She was a Maria Magdalena who washed away sins, and she was Venus Anadyomene to me, though she was ill-nourished I think since birth, my artist's eye saw she was puny, though my lover's eye saw her breasts as globes of milky marble, and the tuft between her legs as the bushes surrounding the gate to Paradise Lost--and Regained.
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A.S. Byatt |
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58c748b
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The truth is," said Florence, "that the women we are--have become--are not fit to do without men, or to live with them, in the world as it was. And if change, and don't, there will be no help for us."
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A.S. Byatt |
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30ce5ac
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Ah," said Florence, grimly. "A woman has to be extraordinary, she can't just do things as though she had a right. You have to get better marks than the Senior Wrangler, and still you can't have a degree."
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A.S. Byatt |
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e2581ea
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Suppressing natural feelings, Methley said, in the end distorted both mind and body. And excluding them from the consideration of novelists distorted the novel, infantilised it, turned good fiction into bad lying.
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A.S. Byatt |
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b06434b
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Se amava quel viso non indulgente, era perche era netto, espressivo e risoluto. Vedeva, o gli sembrava di vedere, come tali qualita fossero state mascherate o soffocate da atteggiamenti piu convenzionali: una modestia simulata, un'appropriata pazienza, un disprezzo che si spacciava per calma. Al suo peggio - oh, lui la vedeva chiaramente, malgrado la possessione che esercitava su di lui - al suo peggio guardava in basso e di traverso e sorr..
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identity
love
women-s-nature
possession
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A.S. Byatt |
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a7420bc
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Julian occasionally thought that enjoying oneself was a very strenuous occupation.
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A.S. Byatt |
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5986cc4
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Olive thought she had forgotten what pain could be. She was a railway tunnel in which a battering train had come to a fiery halt. She was a burrow in which a creature had wedged itself and could go neither forwards nor back.
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A.S. Byatt |
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a6d6464
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UCL made provision for women to study science. Skinner told Humphry that a good Fabian should consider his daughters' education as seriously as his sons'. Humphry said that Dorothy--and Griselda--were still only little girls. Hardly, said Skinner, smiling at the two serious young faces. Hardly. They would be young women any moment, he could see. His look made Dorothy feel unexpectedly heated, on her skin, and also inside her. She wriggled a..
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A.S. Byatt |
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4cff8f7
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You asked, why are the poor poor. I was struck by that." "What I can't see--what I really can't see--is why everyone doesn't ask themselves that, all the time . How can these people bear to go to church and then go about in the streets and see what is there for everyone to see--and get told what the Bible says about the poor--and go on riding in carriages, and choosing neckties and hats--and eating huge beefsteaks--I can't see it." "I have ..
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A.S. Byatt |
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48e1de8
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It was immediately clear that the book had been undisturbed for a very long time, perhaps even since it had been laid to rest. The librarian fetched a checked duster, and wiped away the dust, a black, thick, tenacious Victorian dust, a dust composed of smoke and fog particles accumulated before the Clean Air acts.
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library
books
dust
pollution
victorian
library-books
london
librarians
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A.S. Byatt |
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9b225e0
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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, which bore some relation to the smell of bitten apples. It was the smell of death and destruction, and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful.
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A.S. Byatt |
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7cc986e
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There were all sorts of small canals and cuts and runnels to be crossed. There were trees that had been shaped by steady blasts of wind, stunted and reaching sideways. Philip wanted to draw them. They were a stationary form of violent movement.
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A.S. Byatt |
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d61bc3c
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God," said Benedict Fludd, "your God, that is, strides in and out of my life with no warning. One day he seems impossible--laughable, laughable--and the next, he is imperious." He stopped. He said "It is like the phases of the moon, maybe. Or the seasons of the sphere we live on, rolling in and out of the light, skeleton trees one day, and then snow, and afterwards the bright green veil and after that the full heat and shining. Only it is n..
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A.S. Byatt |
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173ddba
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Imagining the end of things, when you are a child, is perhaps impossible. The thin child, despite the war that was raging, was more afraid of eternal boredom, of doing nothing that mattered, of day after day going nowhere, than she was of death or the end of things. When she thought of death she thought of the little boy across the road who had died of diabetes. No one at school, told of this, knew how to respond. Some giggled. They shifted..
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death
children-s-fears
2011
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A.S. Byatt |
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af93bd2
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For Ann, aged two in 1903, a year was half a lifetime. She did not expect the second winter, and then, when it came, vaguely assumed it was eternal, until spring came, and summer came, and she understood that they had come "again" and began to learn to expect."
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A.S. Byatt |
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01faad3
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What I speak of is the real decision as we experience it; and here the movement away from theory and generality is the movement towards truth. All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to creep under the net.4
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A.S. Byatt |
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eb8edbb
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Olive Wellwood told no stories about Goldthorpe, or the Gullfoss mine. She had packed away the slag-heaps and winding-gear, the little house in Morton Row, with its dark uninhabited parlour, its animated kitchen and pocket-sized garden, the ever-present stink of the ash pits across the yards, and the grime that floated onto the strips of lace curtain. She had packed it away in what she saw in her mind as a roped parcel, in oiled silk, with ..
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A.S. Byatt |
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4a595d3
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She remembered the tale she had told to herself of the young woman carrying the packet containing the deaths of Pete and Petey, the young woman walking endlessly in grim weather across the moors, with the unopened packet. There was no room in that packet, for this. She thought of the forest of coeval boys, all eternally present, crowding her room, and the old Olive thought idly, this is a story, there is a story in this. And then she saw th..
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A.S. Byatt |
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317f09d
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I wanted to be a Poet and a Poem.
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neo-victorian
possession
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A.S. Byatt |
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68613c8
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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
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A.S. Byatt |
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0eba35e
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Taka mina p'rvata ot tezi d'lgi stranni noshchi. Posreshchashe go s ozhestochena strast, podobna na negovata, i s niakakvo poznanie, zashchoto iztr'gvashe udovolstvieto si ot nego, raztvariashe se, za da go poluchi, i se vkopchvashe v nego s nak'sani zhivotinski vikove. Galeshe go po kosata i tseluvashe slepoochiiata mu, no s nikakvo tselenasocheno dvizhenie ne se opitvashe da mu dostavi udovolstvie kato na m'zh - i prez vsichki tezi noshch..
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A.S. Byatt |
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b8ebfaa
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Mnogo po-k'sno toi se s'budi v pros'nitsa i reshi, che chuva moreto, koeto ot tazi staia ne beshe nev'zmozhno, no posle os'zna, che tia bezshumno khlipa. Protegna r'ka i tia nesr'chno pritisna litse v'v vrata mu - ne za utekha, a s niakak'v sliap natisk, za da zabravi. - Kakvo ima, mila? - Kak mozhem da go ponesem? - Koe? - Tova. Tova kratko prebroeno vreme. Kak mozhem da go prospim? - Mozhem da m'lchim zaedno i da se prestruvame - pon..
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A.S. Byatt |
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c1b26e5
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Ze probeerde zich zondig te voelen. Maar haar geest wendde zich af, naar waar hij levend was.
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zonde
zonden
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A.S. Byatt |
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918c095
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On the first occasion Mrs Papagay had met her, there had been a discussion of the process of grief, and Mrs Jesse had nodded sagely, "I know that. I have felt that,' like a kind of tragic chorus. 'I have felt everything; I know everything. I don't want any new emotion. I know what it is to feel like a stoan." --
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A.S. Byatt |
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c194cd1
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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 heavens and the air. He actually experienced in his body the fall of certain angels who had formed wrong opinions in their community about thoughts and influx -- he felt a terrible tremor in his sinews and bones -- and saw one dark and ugly bi..
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A.S. Byatt |
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53ca936
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ls the Conjugial Angel stone That here he stands with heavy head The backward-looking pillared dead Inert, moss-covered, aIl alone? The Holy Ghost trawls ln the Void, With fleshly Sophy on His Hook The Sons of God crowd round to look At plumpy limbs to be enjoyed The Greater Man casts out the line With dangling Sophy as the lure Who howls around the Heavens' colure To clasp the Human Form Divine Rose-petals fall from fallen hair That in the..
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A.S. Byatt |
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c475a3a
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Biakha detsa na takova vreme i takava kultura, koiato se otnasiashe s nedoverie k'm liubovta, vliubvaneto, romantichnata liubov, romantikata izobshcho, i v'preki tova, siakash za da si otm'sti, ne spirashe da b'lva seksualen ezik, slovesna seksualnost, analiz, disektsiia, dekonstruktiviz'm, ogolvane. Teoretichno biakha dobre podkovani, zashchoto znaekha za falokratsiiata i zavistta k'm penisa, za punktuatsiiata, punktsiiata i pronikvaneto, ..
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A.S. Byatt |
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927a3cd
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Toi zhiveeshe v romans, ednovremenno vulgaren i izt'nchen, t'kmo romans't beshe edna ot sistemite, na koito beshe podvlasten, t'i kato za dobro ili zlo - i rano ili k'sno - pochti vseki obitatel na zapadniia sviat e podvlasten na romansovite ochakvaniia. Podozirashe, che romans't triabva da ost'pi pred sotsialniia realiz'm dori ako esteticheskiiat temperament na vremeto se buntuvashe sreshchu tova.
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A.S. Byatt |
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820e78b
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Infatti devi sapere che io avevo un fratello gemello, bello come il giorno, e gentile come un cerbiatto, e sano come pane fresco e burro.
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A.S. Byatt |
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f113e91
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Ti koia si? Tuk na nai-visokata politsa az stoia zatvorena, smalena v pokrita s paiazhini st'klenitsa, kato dreven prilep izsushena. A kakva bila si? Zlatolikiiat bog me razpalvashe, peekh s krias'tsi, vs'shchnost pishchiakh, tazi negova zhar me raziazhdashe, beshe negov, ne moi onzi glas. Kakvo vizhdash? Vidiakh tv'rd bez osnova kak krepi nebesata, vidiakh kak pokrova v'rkhu Tsezar namiatat. Na kakvo se nadiavash? Strastta e og'n potushe..
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A.S. Byatt |
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473fa3a
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You will not be here--I shall not be here--much longer.'
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time
mortality
love
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A.S. Byatt |
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c117da1
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Randolph Henry Ash's Proserpine had been seen as a Victorian reflection of religious doubt, a meditation on the myths of resurrection. Lord Leighton had painted her, distraught and floating, a golden figure in a tunnel of darkness. Blackadder
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A.S. Byatt |
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3eff287
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She looked, quickly, quickly, it was better than before, thanked him and averted her eyes. She came to trust him with her disintegration.
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A.S. Byatt |
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da1cc11
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The black thing in her brain and the dark water on the page were the same thing, a form of knowledge. This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories.
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A.S. Byatt |
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95c1cd6
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The men and women of the Golden Age, Hesiod wrote, lived in an eternal spring, for hundreds of years, always youthful, fed on acorns from a great oak, on wild fruits, on honey. In the Silver Age, which is less written about, the people lived for 100 years as children, without growing up, and then quite suddenly aged and died. The Fabians and the social scientists, writers and teachers saw, in a way earlier generations had not, that children..
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hesiod
infantile
silver-age
victorians
prehistory
freud
childhood
golden-age
nostalgia
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A.S. Byatt |