Quote

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.

Will Self

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Will Self
Age: 63
Born: 1961
Born: September 26
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
West London Infirmary
William Woodard Self
Arms
Synonymous
Days
Obsessive
Open
Dwelling
Getting
Happier
Future
Former
Mind
Embrace
Time
Older
Certainly
Rushed

More quotes by Will Self

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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.
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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.
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A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.
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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.
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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!
Will Self
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Like all right-listening folk, I am an implacable enemy of all muzak.
Will Self
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It is fair to say that insofar as sport is taken seriously by those who play it, then to that extent their conduct in play - their ability to deal with loss or victory, their ability to meld strategic thinking and brute force - can be taken as a small-scale model of how they, or others like them, might behave in life.
Will Self
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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.
Will Self
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I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.
Will Self
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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.
Will Self
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I write because I feel driven to write. I write from a sense of inner necessity. I don't write for anything other than that.
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Vaughn's vision is older, wiser and harder than Ritchie's.
Will Self
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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.
Will Self
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I loathe computers more and more, so I have one I can shut down and shelve like a book.
Will Self
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Just as the blurring between childhood and adulthood has produced the kidult, so the stretching of middle into old age has fostered another peculiar chimera: septuagenarians with apoptosis sporting the depeche mode.
Will Self
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I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.
Will Self
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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.
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The fictional work is a kind of actor that wears a satirical garb but can put on other costumes as well.
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In our benighted age, when films about amusement park rides and electronic fidgets scoop the honours, perhaps Hollywood redux is the best we can hope for.
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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.
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