"Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which……" — Will Self
"Well, I wanted to be a philosopher, which is the idlest occupation in the world. I wanted to be involved in abstract thought, but because of various problems with the authorities I wasn't able to pull that one off. A lifetime of idleness in academia would have really suited me. So I was thrown out, as it were. Other than that, there seemed no possible idle occupations, so writing . . . although writing isn't exactly idleness. There's an enormous tension between indolence and languor."
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Will Self
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112 Quotes by Will Self
Will Self has 112 quotes on this site.
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Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet.
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So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal.
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I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at…
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I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.
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Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the…
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If the seventies were bulbous, and the eighties sharp, the nineties were nothing but bogus.
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The seventies were my fattest decade. Overall I think the seventies were distinctly bulbous. People looked chunky, typefaces were rounded,…
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...catching a glimpse of his rather hippyish form in a mirror, he wonders at this atavism of apparel, is it…
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Whenever I produce my best work, it's always because I've spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.
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Always carry a notebook. And I mean always.
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Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft...
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Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party…
See all 112 quotes by Will Self »
More Able Quotes
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I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know…
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