People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction. — Will Self Copy Share Image
The seventies were my fattest decade. Overall I think the seventies were distinctly bulbous. People looked chunky, typefaces were rounded, writing implements… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Lives don't divide up into chapters. People don't just talk, while nothing's going on in their head, and then respond. You know,… — Will Self Copy Share Image
In my view, the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels,… — Will Self Copy Share Image
This is the paradox for me: in failure alone is there any possibility of success. I don't think I'm alone in this… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Mother sighed with exasperation. "Look, there aren't any "people in charge of death". When you die you move to another part of… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Sometimes, when I hear people without experience of addiction blame addicts for their behaviour, I feel like saying to them: 'You simply… — Will Self Copy Share Image
In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Television is the same as the telephone, and the same as the World Wide Web for that matter. People who become obsessed… — Will Self Copy Share Image
The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most… — Will Self Copy Share Image
The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness,… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that… — Will Self Copy Share Image
As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty. — Will Self Copy Share
“As my voice died away I became conscious of the voice of another woman two tables away. I couldn't hear what she was saying… — Will Self Copy Share
That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all education with… — Will Self Copy Share
I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their… — Will Self Copy Share
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of… — Will Self Copy Share
I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to… — Will Self Copy Share
I'm very happy for whatever plaudits might come the way of my work, but I never ever sit down to write x with y… — Will Self Copy Share
As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production. — Will Self Copy Share
“I explained to him - as I withdrew the cup, ripped open the sachet and dunked the tea bag - that tea was an… — Will Self Copy Share
There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in a spirit… — Will Self Copy Share
It would seem that I, who never could make much sense of physics when I was at school, have now gained a strong sense… — Will Self Copy Share
“…with the morbid realisation that his sexual being was a dull thing, a lifeless thing, a mass-produced marionette with chipped paint and fraying strings” — Will Self Copy Share
A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. — Will Self Copy Share
I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will I in… — Will Self Copy Share
