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Will Self

Will Self Biography

Author

Will Self is a British author known for his distinctive style and sharp wit. His works span across various genres including novels, non-fiction, short stories, and plays. Born on September 26, 1961, Self's writing often delves into the complexities of modern society and the darker aspects of human nature.

Will Self is a British author known for his distinctive style and sharp wit. His works span across various genres including novels, non-fiction, short stories, and plays. Born on September 26, 1961, Self's writing often delves into the complexities of modern society and the darker aspects of human nature.

Related Quotes

“The postgrad at least knew enough to know that he would never know enough, lying under the stars which hung from the inky sky like bunches of inconceivably heavy, lustrous grapes, dusted with the yeast of eternity.”

Stars Knowledge Sky Eternity Grapes Yeast

Author:Will Self

“A funny yet interesting read, Will Self knowa his stuff and must do a lot of deep research.”

Book:Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

Source: Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

“Don't look back until you've written an entire draft, just begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in ... the edit." [Ten rules for writing fiction (part two), The Guardian, 20 February 2010]”

Writing Creative Process Writing Advice

Author:Will Self

“The Ridyadh Bodkin and the Kuala Lumpur Mushroom are positive Meccas for all kinds of daredevils-of this much I'm sure. Decadent Saudi princes pilot microlights through huge holes in their facades, while Malaysian spider men scale them using giant suckers in lieu of crampons. All these activities serve to demonstrate is that modernist megaliths have completely suborned the role of natural features in providing us with the essential and vertiginous perspective we require to comprehend accurately our ant-like status.”

Psychogeography

Author:Will Self

“Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.”

“Sometimes, when I hear people without experience of addiction blame addicts for their behaviour I feel like saying to them: "You simply don't understand - how can a child be held responsible for doing such a dreadful thing to himself?" But then again, at other times I have to acknowledge: it was done wilfully.”

People Feels Children Sometimes Done Responsible Blame Addiction Acknowledge Behaviour Addict

Author:Will Self

“I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.”

Feels Enough Facts Pay Attention Reactions Pay Attention Guts Refusal Modernism Smack Continental Forensics

Author:Will Self

“Certainly, for time out of mind, an obsessive dwelling on happier former days has been synonymous with getting older, while it was the juvenescent who rushed with open arms to embrace the future.”

Mind Has Beens Arms Embrace Former Getting Old Getting Older Dwelling Obsessive Open Arms

Author:Will Self

“Is there anything more useless than a crouton? I sometimes wake up in the small hours with a start and realise that what's roused me is an overpowering urge to visit violence on its originator.”

Sometimes Hours Violence Wake Up Useless Urges Realising Overpowering

Author:Will Self

“Some people have human muses - mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.”

People Feels Humans Cities Mines Depends London Muse Ambivalence

Author:Will Self

“This is the paradox for me: in failure alone is there any possibility of success. I don't think I'm alone in this - nor do I think it's an attitude that only prevails among people whose work is obviously "creative".”

People Thinking Attitude Creative Possibility Paradox

Author:Will Self

“The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.”

Periods Willpower Plumber Remuneration

Author:Will Self

“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.”

Long Art Literature Term Comfortable Curious Long Term Uneasy High Art Literature And Music Long Term Marriage

Author:Will Self

“As a species, we're addicted to the facile discrimination involved in saying that something or phenomenon is either 'this' or 'that' - how much more uncomfortable that it may well be 'the other'.”

Wells May Involved Species Discrimination Uncomfortable Phenomenon

Author:Will Self

“There is something mysteriously powerful that can happen when young, inchoate minds come into contact with older and more worldly ones in a spirit of intellectual and creative endeavour - if I believed in progress, I suppose that's what I'd call it.”

Ifs Mind Happens Young Spirit Powerful Creative Progress Intellectual Contact Worldly Endeavour

Author:Will Self

“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.”

People Knows Happens Divides Chapters

Author:Will Self

“In my view the plangent artificiality of a lot of creative work results from the fact that the people who write novels, direct films and put on plays tend to read too many novels, watch too many films and go to too many plays.”

People Writing Play Facts Film Results Views Watches Novel Creative Direct Creative Work Artificiality

Author:Will Self

“My novels tend to come about from a fusion of two big ideas, creating a critical mass that then fissions, throwing off hundreds of other particles, riffs, tropes and characters.”

Two Ideas Character Bigs Novel Creating Mass Critical Throwing Particles Fusion Big Ideas Tropes Critical Mass Fission

Author:Will Self

“Of course, with well-masticated food playing the role of social glue, it's absolutely essential that everyone clear their plate. Sod the starving kiddies in Africa - it's the overfed ones here we need to worry about.”

Needs Wells Courses Social Roles Worry Clear Essentials Plates Starving Glue Sod

Author:Will Self

“I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.”

Thinking Littles Development Exercise Alternatives Arrested Retrospect

Author:Will Self

“When George VI - displaying a flair for timing that was utterly absent in his lifetime - upped and died, the way was clear for her to inhabit her logical position as the eminence cerise, the bolster behind the throne.”

Behinds Thrones

Author:Will Self

“There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that connecting with someone through the agency of the written word. Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality. The reader I seek is a tautology, for he/she is simply exactly the person who wants to read what I have written...”

Want Persons Ideas Age Race Class Written Identity Reader Pages Gender Naked Intimacy Agency Connecting Thrilling Nationality Written Word Tautology

Author:Will Self

“Wealth is a form of power in our society. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have too much wealth, ipso facto, you have too much power - therefore you have too much responsibility - and you're a kind of dictator.”

Ifs Kind Form Wealth Responsibility Too Much Our Society Dictator Great Power Great Responsibility Too Much Power

Author:Will Self

“Things are only boring if you are boring.”

Author:Will Self

“I make no apology for preoccupying myself with architecture, television, conceptual art, restaurants and Jane Asher's cakes.”

Art Television Architecture Restaurants Cake Apology Jane Conceptual Art

Author:Will Self

“I enjoy doing very high mileages, partly out of masochism and also because I like to feel the shape of the landscape.”

Feels Enjoy Shapes Landscape Masochism Mileage

Author:Will Self

“We've clearly entered a period in which the analog of text is no longer important or relevant. All text will be electronic. I accept that fact. My house has thousands of books in it, and I've started to look at them completely differently. They now seem to me to be like antiquarian objects. Their use value has become negligible to me because I'm perfectly happy to read on an e-reader.”

Looks Important Book Facts Use Seems Values House Accepting Objects Reader Periods Relevant Analog

Author:Will Self

“Schadenfreude is so nutritious.”

Author:Will Self

“I think the fundamental apprehension is that the city's an organism of some form, rather than being governed from above.”

Thinking Form Cities Fundamentals Organisms Apprehension

Author:Will Self

“I used to find myself goofed out in the street on drugs. And I had such a bad problem with addiction at the time that I didn't mind. I was dealing cocaine and shooting up a lot of cocaine. And that's not a good space to be in.”

Mind Problem Used Space Streets Drug Addiction Shooting Cocaine Shooting Up

Author:Will Self

“Because I was a young man so, of course, I did get into fights. The last time I actually was in a fight, in the sense of throwing punches myself, was probably when I was at college, not since 1980. But I remember being attacked quite a few times in the '80s.”

Men Lasts Remember Young Fighting Courses College Young Man Throwing Last Time 80s Throwing Punches

Author:Will Self

“I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.”

Thinking Theist Pragmatists Misreading

Author:Will Self

“If you believe something, you can have a morality that means something as well. You can feel recognized as an individual within the universe; it can give meaning to who you are.”

Ifs Giving Feels Believe Wells Mean Universe Individual Morality Who You Are If You Believe

Author:Will Self

“Why is Mr Universe always from Earth?”

Earth Universe Mr Universe

Author:Will Self

“As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.”

Art I Can Century Bounds Twentieth Century

Author:Will Self

“I can't remember who it was who advocated that you should march with the left and dine with the right but I've often concurred, taking the view that I personify the great tolerance of Britain by consenting to being regally entertained. Besides, there is a degree of truth in the view that while the left are worthier, the right are wittier.”

Should I Can Remember Left Views Degrees Tolerance Britain March Dine

Author:Will Self

“I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their lowest common denominator. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest.”

Term Common Psychology Crowds Lowest Evolutionary Psychology Anarchist Herds Mistrust Common Denominator Power And Control Lowest Common Denominator

Author:Will Self

“You don't need to know this - but here goes: due to some acquired infantilism, I feel compelled to fall asleep listening to the radio. On a good night, I'll push the frail barque of my psyche off into the waters of Lethe accompanied by the midnight newsreader - on a bad one, it's the shipping forecast.”

Knows Needs Feels Night Fall Water Listening Radio Dues Midnight Compelled Good Night Frail Forecasts Shipping Goodnight Lethe

Author:Will Self

“A party full of 'likeable' people doesn't bear contemplating.”

People Party Bears Contemplating Likeable

Author:Will Self

“I like texting as much as the next kidult - and embrace it as yet more evidence, along with email, that we live now in the post-aural age, when an unsolicited phone call is, thankfully, becoming more and more understood to be an unspeakable social solecism, tantamount to an impertinent invasion of privacy.”

Age Next Social Becoming Understood Evidence Embrace Phones Posts Privacy Email Invasion Becoming More Phone Calls Unspeakable Texting Invasion Of Privacy

Author:Will Self

“When anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.”

Ifs Giving Littles Seems Creative Goes On Criticism Destroyed Unusual Approval Creative Life

Author:Will Self

“It is not that sport, over-indulged in, coarsens the mind; it is that it dulls it.”

Author:Will Self

“Live life and write about life. Of the making of many books there is indeed no end, but there are more than enough books about books.”

Life Writing Book Ends Enough Live Life

Author:Will Self

“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.”

Beautiful Young Hips Breasts Young Women Back When Very Beautiful

Author:Will Self

“As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.”

Ifs Paper Fluid

Author:Will Self

“As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.”

Productions Convinced

Author:Will Self

“As the render is to the building, and the blueprint to the machine, so sport is to social existence.”

Social Sports Existence Building Machines Blueprints

Author:Will Self

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

I Can Fantasy Bathroom Fantasy Life

Author:Will Self

“I loathe computers more and more, so I have one I can shut down and shelve like a book.”

I Can Book Computer Down And Loathe

Author:Will Self

“I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.”

Writing Firsts Stills Waking

Author:Will Self

About the Author

Born: September 26, 1961
Known for: Author
Quotes: 131

Related Topics

Writing Ifs Thinking People Feels Age Book Fiction Looks Seems

Popular Topics

People Ifs Thinking Knows Men World Way Want Love Life Inspirational Needs Giving Feels Should Writing Trying Years Mind Firsts

Books & Sources

How the Dead LiveRelated source material

Junk Mail: ReissuedRelated source material

Liver: A Fictional Organ With a Surface Anatomy of Four LobesRelated source material

The Quantity Theory of InsanityRelated source material

The Quantity Theory of Insanity: ReissuedRelated source material

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