"Think of this – that the writer wrote alone, and the reader read alone, and they were alone with each other. True, the writer may have been alone also with Spenser's golden apples in the Faerie Queene..."
- A.S. Byatt
"The reading eye must do the work to make them live, and so it did, again and again, never the same life twice, as the artist had intended."
"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,..."
"She grew up in the ordinary paradise of the English countryside. When she was five she walked to school, two miles, across meadows covered with cowslips, buttercups, daisies, vetch, rimmed by hedges f..."
"Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins..."
"In the end it wins a king's daughter, who is expected to burn its hedgehog-skin at night, and does so, and finds herself clasping a beautiful prince, all singed and soot-black. Christabel says, 'And i..."
"You will not be here--I shall not be here--much lo"
"He was a compact, clearcut man, with precise features, a lot of very soft black hair, and thoughtful dark brown eyes. He had a look of wariness, which could change when he felt relaxed or happy, which..."