Will Self

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

“As my voice died away I became conscious of the voice of another woman two tables away. I couldn't hear what she…

— Will Self

That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all…

— Will Self

I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according…

— Will Self

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those…

— Will Self

I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than…

— Will Self

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

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

“I explained to him - as I withdrew the cup, ripped open the sachet and dunked the tea bag - that tea…

— Will Self

There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in…

— Will Self

It would seem that I, who never could make much sense of physics when I was at school, have now gained a…

— Will Self

Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet.

— Will Self

“....with the morbid realisation that his sexual being was a dull thing, a lifeless thing, a mass-produced marionette with chipped paint and…

— Will Self

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

— Will Self

I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will…

— Will Self

Is there anything more useless than a crouton? I sometimes wake up in the small hours with a start and realise that…

— Will Self

Who'd want to be a modernist writer in the English-speaking world?

— Will Self

“He parked in a nearby street and walked out on to the bridge. Below him the lights of London spread away in…

— Will Self

In our benighted age, when films about amusement park rides and electronic fidgets scoop the honours, perhaps Hollywood redux is the best…

— Will Self

Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract…

— Will Self

The whole aesthetics of computers very much feeds into my OCD. They fill my head with obsessionalities and my actions become very…

— Will Self

As a species, we're addicted to the facile discrimination involved in saying that something or phenomenon is either 'this' or 'that' -…

— Will Self

Television is the same as the telephone, and the same as the World Wide Web for that matter. People who become obsessed…

— Will Self

If you believe something, you can have a morality that means something as well. You can feel recognized as an individual within…

— Will Self

If we bought everything on the Internet, our eyes and mouths and nostrils would probably begin to film over with a tegument…

— Will Self