208 Quotes by Will Self

Continuous present is all we have, and stream of consciousness – which in a novel is arguably just as artificial as the stilted dialogue that you get in most conventional novels. They’re all stratagems to try to get closer to the texture of lived life.

I do have a fantasy life in which I can grout bathrooms – but not for a living.

Whenever I produce my best work, it’s always because I’ve spent time being idle. Something always emerges after nothing.

A party full of ‘likeable’ people doesn’t bear contemplating.

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.

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.

From time to time, as if heaven-sent to annoy, someone will ask me if I’m self-disciplined when it comes to my work. I usually look witheringly at them and snarl, ‘What do you think?’ I mean, how do you imagine anyone writes a quarter of a million words a year for publication?

The only proper suit-and-tie job I’ve had in my life was the two years in the late 1980s when I ran a small corporate publishing company. I even had a Ford Sierra!

The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage.