Andrew O'Hagan Quotes

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

'Reality' is a notion that journalists take for granted.

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

We do not read to pass the time, but to inhabit time.

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.

Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.

The first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

Interviewing is not a democratic art.

Traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

A living museum must surely see itself as a locus of argument. A breathing art institution is not a lockup but a moveable feast.