A. S. Byatt Quotes

I have little belief in human progress. The human race is incurably idiotic. It will never be happy.

There's no such thing as good news in America.

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.

I got fed up with the human race, really. I got a very negative feeling about human potentials. And for a while, I thought I might write a book without any human beings in it whatsoever.

I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all. That is something that you cannot say aloud, or perhaps even think.

Pessimists are the people who have no hope for themselves or for others. Pessimists are also people who think the human race is beneath their notice, that they're better than other human beings.

Pessimism is rife in Israel.

No one's really happy anyway, it's not human.

People tend to believe the bad rather than the good.

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half-empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth.

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club - the 'hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.'

The one thing I have absolute faith in is mankind's capacity to make things worse. No matter how bad it gets, we're all happy to screw each other over. It's enough to make me wonder if we should have let the zombies win.

Ain't no use jiving, ain't no use joking, everything is broken.

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.

Though I carry always some ill-nature about me, yet it is, I hope, no more than is in this world necessary for a preservative.

You don't even live once.

All futurity seems teeming with endless destruction never to be repelled; Desperate remorse swallows the present in a quenchless rage.

Hope is the most hopeless thing of all.

How do you know what the world is like? Do you know the world is a foul sty? Do you know if you rip the fronts off houses you'd find swine? The world's a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?

I don't like hope very much. In fact, I hate it. It's the crystal meth of emotions. It hooks you fast and kills you hard. It's bad news. The worst. It's sharp sticks and cherry bombs. When hope shows up, it's only a matter of time until someone gets hurt.

You can always find some expert who will say something hopelessly hopeless about anything.

If there is a chronic infirmity by which every teacher ought to be afflicted, it is, indeed, hope.

I'm cynical about society, politics, newspapers, government. But I'm not cynical about life, love, goodness, death. That's why I really don't want to be labeled a cynic.

the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

I hope we're not just human garbage drifting toward a big sewer. But I think so.