A. S. Byatt Quotes

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

Anything that keeps you happy and writing is part of my writing ritual: I like music, so I tend to have it playing in the background. But if I'm interested, I can write in an airport waiting areas.

To write, I think one must sit in one place and be bored. Boredom is a very good state for writers to be. Things cook away in your head when you're bored, and suddenly one day, you have a book or a germ of a book.

Some writers like to work in other places like coffee shops, but I can't - I'd end up people-watching. And if I were at a bookstore, I'd be reading. Sometimes I have some music on, but usually I like it quiet.

Successful writers say you should never work from a desk with a view, and the view I have from this one is a huge distraction. There's a garden bursting with fresh vegetation, and just beyond the high wall at the end of it, I can see the sign of the local pub across the road. Distractions, eh? I'm so easily led.

I write anywhere - when I have an idea, it's hard not to write. I used to be kind of precious about where I wrote. Everything had to be quiet and I couldn't be disturbed; it really filled my day.

When I write I find a quiet place.

I write in the mornings once the kids have gone to school, taking my laptop and a coffee to a little writer's room in town where I plant noise-cancelling headphones on my head and get to work.

Decide where and when you want to write. I like space, and silence is an inspiration to me.

I developed the habit of writing novels behind a closed door, or at my uncle's, on the dining table.

I don't write listening to music, and in a way it seems silly that any writer should have to explain why not, as it's possibly no different from saying you don't eat gourmet dinners or play tennis while you're at the keyboard.

When you're writing, it's a very solitary job. It's you and your word processor and a cup of tea.

I don't want to blame anybody, but I just want to tell you that the process of writing is antisocial, so on the days that you have something really important to write, go from lying down directly to your notepad or your computer. Do not talk.

I don't need music to write, but sometimes I put music on. I don't need special clothes or even my own equipment.

When you're writing fiction or poetry... it really comes down to this: indifference to everything except what you're doing... A young writer could do worse than follow the advice given in those lines.

After 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' it took me a few months to shut out the world. I really had to turn off the Internet and sort of cloister myself away from the world again and sink into that psychic space to write again.

Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.

I am in total silence when I write - I don't even like the sound of the dryer going - I like the quiet.

Unfortunately, poetry is not born in noise, in crowds, or on a bus. There have to be four walls and the certainty that the telephone will not ring. That's what writing is all about.

Sometimes I write with music on, and if I'm in a good flow, I don't even hear it.

Volume depends precisely on the writer's having been able to sit in a room every day, year after year, alone.

I like the busy-ness of office life. What I discovered, to my surprise, is that I love the solitary nature of writing. What happens is that you write when you're ready.

Composing demands a degree of isolation.

Although I've made notes for things and even written synopses sitting in trains or on park benches, for the complete composition of things I need absolute solitude, preferably an empty house.