I probably owe my political dismay to New Labour, but also my growing sense that the satirical shape of human affairs is international and historical, not glued to the tawdry ambitions of a team of politicians who represent nothing but themselves. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
Everybody has an idea of the kind of society they’d like to live in, and I would like to live in one where our senior politicians were spirited and original and possibly even good at what they do. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
In Britain, the great hidden secret of talking animals and children’s literature is how political it was in its bones, beneath the obvious cuteness. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
We sometimes forget that human invention can also be a subject of human invention: that might seem a modern notion, or a postmodern one, but novelists have taken time – sometimes time out from their realist fixations – to source and satirise the speech and power we rely on. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring – and where the sea might deposit you – until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work. Andrew O'Hagan Read Quote
