A Quote by A. S. Byatt

Novels arise out of the shortcomings of History.

A. S. Byatt

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Arise History Novels Out Shortcomings

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A. S. Byatt
English - Novelist
Born: August 24, 1936

History's lesson is to make the most of reform opportunities when they arise because they do not arise often and they do not last long.

Christopher Bond

The test of a successful person is not an ability to eliminate all problems before they arise, but to meet and work out difficulties when they do arise.

David J. Schwartz

With all my heart I beseech and beg my two hundred million female compatriots to assume their responsibility as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise!

Qiu Jin

The only form of fiction in which real characters do not seem out of place is history. In novels they are detestable.

Oscar Wilde

Humankind's constant effort to fix its shortcomings is what drives human history.

Joel Garreau

All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.

A. J. P. Taylor

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.

William Hazlitt

I feel quite at home writing short stories but nervous and anxious when writing novels, as if the bad time of consecutive failures might arise again.

Charles Baxter

To such idle talk it might further be added: that whenever a certain exclusive occupation is coupled with specific shortcomings, it is likewise almost certainly divorced from certain other shortcomings.

Carl Friedrich Gauss

We are not telling Tudor history; we are creating ' Wolf Hall ' from novels, which are already a rereading of Tudor history.

Damian Lewis

We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.

Saul David

Poetry can only be made out of other poems; novels out of other novels.

Northrop Frye

Movies are not novels, and that's why, when filmmakers try to adapt novels, particularly long or complex novels, the result is almost always failure. It can't be done.

Paul Auster

My first attraction to writing novels was the plot, that almost extinct animal. Those novels I read which made me want to be a novelist were long, always plotted, novels - not just Victorian novels, but also those of my New England ancestors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

John Irving

I think there's a false division people sometimes make in describing literary novels, where there are people who write systems novels, or novels of ideas, and there are people who write about emotional things in which the movement is character driven. But no good novels are divisible in that way.

Dana Spiotta

I love general history. That's all I read really. I don't read novels, I read history. I love it. I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history. I live in Kentucky on a farm. A lot of revolution, a lot of military history I love.

Steve Zahn

A Quote by A. S. Byatt

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