Will Self Quotes

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.

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.

I do have a fantasy life in which I can grout bathrooms - but not for a living.

As the render is to the building, and the blueprint to the machine, so sport is to social existence.

As a writer, I'm not convinced that we are the best equipped to understand how we go about the business of literary production.

A party full of 'likeable' people doesn't bear contemplating.

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.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always.

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.

People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.

The life of the professional writer - like that of any freelance, whether she be a plumber or a podiatrist - is predicated on willpower. Without it there simply wouldn't be any remuneration, period.

The novelist, quite rightly, fears the psychoanalyst as both an enemy and a usurper.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

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.

As a bookish adolescent, I sopped up texts as if I were blotting paper and they were fluid.

I think in retrospect that all those 'alternative'modes of living were little more than exercises in arrested development.

Lives don't divide up into chapters. People don't just talk, while nothing's going on in their head, and then respond. You know, none of these things actually happen.

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.

Without a shadow of doubt, Trafalgar Square has to be one of the most crap urban public spaces in the world.

I prefer to write first drafts as soon as possible after waking, so that the oneiric inscape is still present to me.

Once the working classes were in chains, now they're in chain restaurants.

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.

Why is Mr Universe always from Earth?

I didn’t know that the times we spent together on the weekends, the times that we laughed together, and the times you helped me out was your way of silently wishing me a beautiful goodbye.

The complexities of life can never be untangled by man

It has been my experience that, even when a man has a sense of humor, it only really carries him to the point where he will join in a laugh at the expense of the other fellow.

There’s no easier way to cure foolishness than to give a man leave to be foolish. And the only way to show a fellow that he’s chosen the wrong business is to let him try it.

I want to say right here that the easiest way in the world to make enemies is to hire friends.

But some people, and especially very young people, don’t think anything’s worth believing unless it’s hard to believe.

I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is not an apology, but a life.

What I must do is all that concerns me,

You would compliment a coxcomb doing a good act, but you would not praise an angel.

With nowhere to go, we have everywhere else to go.

All is contained within the silence of death, the quietest and the loudest sound in the universe.

If you want to be free of the wars of the world, begin by resolving the wars within you. If you want to see the world at peace, create peace within your mind.

The universe and the law of attraction speak a language that knows no words, only discerning your intent through sacrifice and what you are willing to give up.

Love was never meant to be contained solely in our hearts, just as life in a seed was always meant to break through into the world and become beauty to be shared.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

The student is to read history actively not passively.

Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it today because it is not of today.

A mind might ponder its thought for ages, and not gain so much self-knowledge as the passion of love shall teach it in a day.

As I naturally go through a full range of emotions in my life, I mustn’t feel ashamed for feeling lost, for it is honest and human to feel such.

Currently, there is no cure for MS, but there are treatments that modify disease activity, slow the course of the disease, and alleviate its effects.

At the end of the day it’s not ‘what looks good’ that matters, it’s ‘what feels’ good.

Revolutionary moments often seem to occur in history when large numbers of individuals have a change in consciousness, regarding themselves and their status

To experience positive/healthy emotions you don’t need a big house or a nice car or a managerial job or a million dollar in your bank.

She toyed around with his smiles and emotions, till they actually turned plastic. And then, She changed the toy…

Optimal nutrition is eating the right things, in the right amounts, at the right time.

If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth…

Trying to force something is the best way to stop it from happening.