68 Quotes by Andrew O'Hagan

We do not read to pass the time, but to inhabit time.

Interviewing is not a democratic art.

It was beguiling to live in a country, Scotland, that didn't look enough like itself to be a location for its own movies... I remember consulting a film book and discovering that Arthur Freed decided to shoot Brigadoon in Hollywood because nowhere in Scotland looked Scottish enough.

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

Given that most movies are bad, and that there are whole categories and sub-categories of badness - the sequel, the Madonna Movie, the Friday 13th Series, or Movies Starring John Travolta Before Pulp Fiction - it is almost impossible to choose a single film for worst movie of all time. But strangely, I do have a nomination and I believe it is actually the worst movie ever made. It is Boxing Helena. The director is David Lynch's daughter, and the film comes with the almost insane-making faults that the family connection might imply.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

Always trust strangers, it’s the people you know that let you down.

Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn’t quite there before.

It’s not a crime not to know yourself. It’s not a crime to send life away. It’s just a shame.