Andrew O'Hagan
Andrew O'Hagan
people stranger knows
Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.
wise
We do not read to pass the time, but to inhabit time.
writing discovery self
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.
art democratic
Interviewing is not a democratic art.
country book scotland
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 breathing museums
A living museum must surely see itself as a locus of argument. A breathing art institution is not a lockup but a moveable feast.
football passion fans
Fans of football and fans of nationhood have a similar zeal. Read the fanzines: their contributors could find a needle-sized diss in a haystack of compliments, and their passions are fundamentalist.
art mean selected
Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp
friday daughter believe
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.
order people creative
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.
america care i-care
As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.
art jobs believe
I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.
reality granted notion
'Reality' is a notion that journalists take for granted.
football running fighting
I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight. I had stood frozen on pitches, done some running about and shouted a lot, as though I cared.