I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development. — Will Self Copy Share Image
I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I think I now understand why it is that the young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of… — Will Self Copy Share Image
A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I think the fundamental apprehension is that the city's an organism of some form, rather than being governed from above. — 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
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to… — Will Self Copy Share Image
People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction. — Will Self Copy Share Image
From time to time, as if heaven-sent to annoy, someone will ask me if I'm self-disciplined when it comes to my work.… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Nowadays, my mood ungoverned, I'm free to think the most outrageous things, such as: might it not be a good idea to… — Will Self Copy Share Image
The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the… — Will Self Copy Share Image
...catching a glimpse of his rather hippyish form in a mirror, he wonders at this atavism of apparel, is it an inversion… — Will Self Copy Share Image
It is fair to say that insofar as sport is taken seriously by those who play it, then to that extent their… — 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
I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will… — 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
