People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction. — 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
“The only circumstances in which I would write a roman a clef would be if I'd lost my fucking car keys.” — Will Self Copy Share Image
It could be argued that every age gets the comfort savagery writer it deserves. — 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
The novelist, quite rightly, fears the psychoanalyst as both an enemy and a usurper. — Will Self Copy Share Image
It might be an idea for all literary critics to read the books they analyse aloud - it certainly helps to fix… — 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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
I am a regular, if not exactly enthusiastic, patron of my local bookshop. I try to buy at least some books there… — Will Self Copy Share Image
“The book was thick and red. It was almost thicker than it was wide, a thickness that somehow enhanced its bookishness. It… — 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
We've clearly entered a period in which the analog of text is no longer important or relevant. All text will be electronic.… — Will Self Copy Share Image
Continuous present is all we have, and stream of consciousness - which in a novel is arguably just as artificial as the… — 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
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
