The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
A. S. ByattRead
She devoured stories with rapacious greed, ranks of black marks on white, sorting themselves into mountains and trees, stars, moons and suns, dragons, dwarfs, and forests containing wolves, foxes and the dark.
Interpretation
The quote highlights a deep passion for literature and the joy of immersing oneself in stories.
In this quote, A. S. Byatt captures the intense love for reading and literature. The imagery of 'devouring stories with rapacious greed' evokes a sense of enthusiasm and insatiable hunger for knowledge and creativity that literature provides. It emphasizes how stories transport readers to fantastical worlds filled with vivid imagery, ranging from nature to mythical creatures, inviting them to explore their imagination and emotions.
In practice
Using this quote at a book club to emphasize the importance of storytelling.
The more research you do, the more at ease you are in the world you're writing about. It doesn't encumber you, it makes you free.
It's because I'm a feminist that I can't stand women limiting other women's imaginations. It really makes me angry.
Why do we take pleasure in gruesome death, neatly packaged as a puzzle to which we may find a satisfactory solution through clues - or if we are not clever enough, have it revealed by the all-powerful tale-teller at the end of the book? It is something to do with being reduced to, and comforted by, playing by the rules.
Never stop paying attention to things. Never make your mind up finally. Do not hold beliefs.
Only write to me, write to me, I love to see the hop and skip and sudden starts of your ink.
I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.
Revision has its own peculiar pleasures and its own peculiar frustrations. The ground rules are already established; the characters already exist. You don't have to bring the characters to life, but you do have to make them more convincing.
When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
I think it's important, if you are an artist, to use your music to stand up for what you believe in.
I like to think of myself at home in the armchair, writing, smoking and occasionally wandering down the shop.
[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.
I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
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