Skip to content

Consciousness Quote by Will Self

“The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness, as it's called, for emotional reasons, and the main emotional reason is verisimilitude. I mean, this is what surprises people: Life is not in the simple past.” quote by Will Self — Download Open image

“The paradox of modernism is, writers make the decision to work with the continuous present, and to work with... stream of consciousness, as it's called, for emotional reasons, and the main emotional reason is verisimilitude. I mean, this is what surprises people: Life is not in the simple past.”

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.3 out of 5 (6 ratings)

More by 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 unabashed difficulty.

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 to her set-faced male companion, but the tone was the same as my own, the exact same plangent composite of need and recrimination. I stared at them. Their faces said it all: his awful detachment, her…

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

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…

Image

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

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…

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…

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.

Image

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

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…

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…

Image

Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet.

Image

Explore all 172 Will Self quotes

More Consciousness quotes

“You're never alone if you're with your soul.”

Gerard Armond Powell

Image

“I now argue that entry into Upper Palaeolithic caves was probably seen as virtually indistinguishable from entry into the mental vortex that leads to…

James David Lewis-Williams

Image

How wonderful it would be to scatter words as they rise to consciousness, to let them lie where they fall.

Image

“People and situations always show us what we need to see and learn about ourselves, and when we take responsibility for our own feelings, how others treat us also changes. Everything in life is there to teach us something about ourselves. Don’t blame others, or try to separate yourself from them. Be grateful that they are helping you to become…

Eliza Mada Dalian

With the realization of God comes all power. If the little wave knew that behind it is the great ocean, it could say, "I…

Paramahansa Yogananda

Image

We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our…

Image

It is proposed that a form of free dialogue may well be one of the most effective ways of investigating the crisis which faces society, and indeed the whole of human nature and consciousness today. Moreover, it may turn out that such a form of free exchange of ideas and information is of fundamental relevance for transforming culture and freeing…

The purpose is to be in gratitude forever. Live with applied consciousness, prosperity will break through the walls, flood you with it. You do…

Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Image

“No one has any right to tell you that the way you perceive yourself is wrong. Because by doing so, they also discourage the…

Image

A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally of unity consciousness is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory. The problem is that the structure of any language cannot grasp the nature of unity consciousness,…

So many people are passive participants in their very short time of having a consciousness, and those who aren't inspire me. Like Malala Yousafzai…

Image

“The vision teller tells the vision to unguarded minds' of prey. The programmed.”

Image

Browse all 5,403 Consciousness quotes