There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It’s because America has such an ideology of success. Will Self Read Quote
A very beautiful young woman once asked me to sign her breasts. That was back when I was a hip young thing – it’s been all downhill since then. Will Self Read Quote
I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me. Will Self Read Quote
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 in view – whether it’s a reader, a prize or a sale. Will Self Read Quote
People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction. Will Self Read Quote
Lives don’t divide up into chapters. People don’t just talk, while nothing’s going on in their head, and then respond. You know, none of these things actually happen. Will Self Read Quote
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. Will Self Read Quote
Not only is the statistical madness an assault on individuality, it’s also one on temporality too. Statistics – even when accurate – are only an image of the past that can then be Photoshopped before being pasted on to the future. Will Self Read Quote
If the government announced that it was going to allocate a vast tranche of education funding purely to the pupils at the best public schools, there would be a national outcry – and yet this is precisely what the Olympics represents in terms of sports funding. Will Self Read Quote
