68 Quotes by Andrew O'Hagan

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.

Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen.

We now live in the era of fake consensus, or phoney populism, a condition in which galleries and homes are seen to succeed best where they manage feelings of non-difference.

High culture isn't what it used to be.

The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.

When I look back at my childhood on the Ayrshire coast, I recall a basic devotion to the idea that human nature and national character are as unknowable as the weather's rationale.