A. S. Byatt Quotes

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

When I write, I operate as a writer and a reader both - I never know what's going to happen.

I'm writing for my ideal reader, for somebody who's willing to take the time, who's willing to get lost in a new world, who's willing to do their part. But then I have to do my part and give them a sound and a voice that they believe in enough to keep going.

I write for the same reason I read: to find out what's going to happen.

I don't know what the secret is when I am writing it - it really is a surprise to me.

Books are acts of composition: you compose them. You make music: the music is called fiction.

I approach writing stories as a recorder. I think of my role as some kind of reporting device - recording and projecting.

A lot of times as writers, you want to come up with the best possible story, and you bend it according to what you want to happen. I think one of the things that I always try to think about is what would really happen in a situation, what feels real.

I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

I think I'm a born storyteller. Inspiration is all around me. I can read a newspaper article and come up with an idea for a book.

What is the difference between the novelist and the liar? At some moments, I have often wondered.

If you're a fan of anything I do, I'm always telling a story. I'm into that - I like it when you don't know if it was true or not.

I think the most rewarding part for me is kind of not knowing where the story's going next, and then finding out and being blown away by it.

If I feel like I haven't really tapped into the essence of the story when I do an assignment, I may revisit it on my own, and that's when I feel freer to add my imagination. But I think that if you feel imaginatively towards a subject, you really shouldn't do it in a journalistic context, because then you're just fabricating, and that's crazy.

I had originally been looking at writing, including fiction.

Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.

When you write a novel, you make other people see your imaginary friends.

I like to think that I am telling a story rather than writing it.

I like inventing things when I write rather than autobiography.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

Good fiction is made of that which is real, and reality is difficult to come by.

When I was young, I assumed that authors must have traveled the world or done exotic things in order to tell great stories.

The reason is that they define how I have gone about my business. I have trusted to intuition. I did it at the beginning. I do it even now. I have no idea how things might turn out, where in my writing I might go next.

In fiction, you have a rough idea what's coming up next - sometimes you even make a little outline - but in fact you don't know. Each day is a whole new - and for me, a very invigorating - experience.