Will Self
Will Self
William Woodard Selfis an English novelist, journalist, political commentator and television personality...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth26 September 1961
thinking pragmatists misreading
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 names ideas
Nowadays, my mood ungoverned, I'm free to think the most outrageous things, such as: might it not be a good idea to insist that drug companies give their preparations names that tell the user what they really do?
writing thinking people
The seventies were my fattest decade. Overall I think the seventies were distinctly bulbous. People looked chunky, typefaces were rounded, writing implements penile.
fashion animal thinking
...catching a glimpse of his rather hippyish form in a mirror, he wonders at this atavism of apparel, is it an inversion of foetal ontogeny, in which the phenotype passes through previous fashion stages? Soon there will be gaiters and gloves...I will probably die, he thinks, clad in animal skins.
exercise thinking development
I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.
greatness thinking opposites
The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.
thinking people too-much
People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.
believe thinking empowering
I don't think in terms of that bizarre tautology 'value for money' in my literary and journalistic work - and nor will I in my academic role. However, if I don't believe I'm helping my students towards a fuller and more empowering relationship with the world, then I'll resign.
thinking shining littles
I think I now understand why it is that the young are so very nostalgic. They have so little by way of personal history that they polish it up and make it shine like a treasured heirloom.
mean writing thinking
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?
thinking vignettes stories
A short story is a shard, a sliver, a vignette. It's a biopsy on the human condition but it doesn't have this capacity to think autonomously for itself.
thinking cities fundamentals
I think the fundamental apprehension is that the city's an organism of some form, rather than being governed from above.
attitude thinking people
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'.
writing thinking building-things
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.