--- title: "Will Self Quotes | QuotesBy.net" description: "Will Self writes with a dry, introspective tone that peels back language to reveal hidden forms, appealing to anyone curious about the craft." image: "https://quotesby.net/wp-content/themes/quotesby-editorial/assets/og-default.png" --- ## Will Self quotes 1. > So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet - big deal. [Permalink to quote \#1](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/1/ "Permalink to quote 1") 2. > The eminence cerise, the bolster behind the throne. [Permalink to quote \#2](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/2/ "Permalink to quote 2") 3. > 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:the person who wants to read what I have written. [Permalink to quote \#3](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/3/ "Permalink to quote 3") 4. > I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer. [Permalink to quote \#4](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/4/ "Permalink to quote 4") 5. > 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. [Permalink to quote \#5](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/5/ "Permalink to quote 5") 6. > All my work is highly personal; it's more personal than me. You know, reading my books is having a far more intimate relationship with me than having a relationship with me. [Permalink to quote \#6](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/6/ "Permalink to quote 6") 7. > I want to be misunderstood. And the other thing that amuses me is: I don't particularly want to be liked. Nobody goes into the business of writing satire to be liked. Whether I am or am not a nice bloke is neither here nor there. It's not part of the task I've set myself in my art. [Permalink to quote \#7](https://quotesby.net/Will-Self/7/ "Permalink to quote 7") ## Also attributed 1. > 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. 2. > As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty. 3. > That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all education with training for increased productivity, only makes academe a still more promising environment for a contrarian. 4. > 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. 5. > What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader. 6. > I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym. 7. > 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. 8. > As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production. 9. > 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. 10. > It would seem that I, who never could make much sense of physics when I was at school, have now gained a strong sense of Einsteinian space-time. I am free of the nimbyism of now, and feel a strong kinship with both the dead and the unborn. 11. > Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet. 12. > A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism. 13. > 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. 14. > 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. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "CollectionPage", "name": "Will Self Quotes", "url": "https://quotesby.net/Will-Self", "about": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" }, "hasPart": [ { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet - big deal.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "The eminence cerise, the bolster behind the throne.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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:the person who wants to read what I have written.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "All my work is highly personal; it's more personal than me. You know, reading my books is having a far more intimate relationship with me than having a relationship with me.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I want to be misunderstood. And the other thing that amuses me is: I don't particularly want to be liked. Nobody goes into the business of writing satire to be liked. Whether I am or am not a nice bloke is neither here nor there. It's not part of the task I've set myself in my art.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "As for critical writing about modernism, its moments of lucidity are but fulgurations illuminating the dark and incomprehensible landscape of its subject's unabashed difficulty.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "That tertiary education is under a sustained assault by a political and - it often seems - social consensus that equates all education with training for increased productivity, only makes academe a still more promising environment for a contrarian.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "I'd rather fiddle with my phone for precious seconds than neglect an apostrophe; I'd rather insert a word laboriously keyed out than resort to predictive texting for a - acceptable to some - synonym.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "It would seem that I, who never could make much sense of physics when I was at school, have now gained a strong sense of Einsteinian space-time. I am free of the nimbyism of now, and feel a strong kinship with both the dead and the unborn.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "Drug use and procrastination often go hand in tourniquet.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "A creative life cannot be sustained by approval any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } }, { "@type": "Quotation", "text": "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.", "spokenByCharacter": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Will Self" } } ] } { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://quotesby.net/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Authors", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "W", "item": "https://quotesby.net/authors/w/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "Will Self", "item": "https://quotesby.net/Will-Self" } ] } ```