on writing - a.s. byatt

All old stories, my cousin, will bear telling and telling again in
different ways. What is required is to keep alive, to polish, the
simple clean forms of the tale which must be there - in this case the
angry Ocean, the terrible leap of the horse, the fall of Dahud from
the crupper, the engulfment etc etc. And yet to add something of
yours, of the writer, which makes all these things seem new and
first seen, without having been appropriated for private or personal
ends.   - A.S. Byatt, Possession

By Ailera Stone