As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I write because I feel driven to write. I write from a sense of inner necessity. I don't write for anything other… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me. — Will Self Copy Share Image
I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer. — Will Self Copy Share Image
It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves. — Will Self Copy Share Image
The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over… — Will Self Copy Share Image
The writing life is essentially one of solitary confinement - if you can't deal with this, you needn't apply. — Will Self Copy Share Image
I always wanted to write fiction. Always. As far back as I can remember it's been integral to my sense of myself… — 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… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I'm very happy for whatever plaudits might come the way of my work, but I never ever sit down to write x… — Will Self Copy Share Image
The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is… — Will Self Copy Share Image
I write as someone who has no more time for repressive Islam than he does for repressive Christianity or Judaism, but at… — Will Self Copy Share Image
To attempt to write seriously is always, I feel, to fail - the disjunction between my beautifully sonorous, accurate and painfully affecting… — Will Self Copy Share Image
“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to… — 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
In truth, even if they have an imperfect insight into their own methods, I still slightly mistrust writers of fiction who are… — Will Self Copy Share Image
For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older,… — Will Self Copy Share Image
“Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day.… — Will Self Copy Share Image
There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceeding day.… — Will Self Copy Share Image
You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the… — Will Self Copy Share Image
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those… — 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
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
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
Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year… — 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
The main differences between contemporary English and American literature is that the baleful pseudo-professionalism imparted by all those crap M.F.A. writing programs… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract… — 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
