Will Self Quotes
For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.
Quotes to Explore
-
Once you research an idea, you begin to develop a perspective. Writing about anything in public, often in real time, has helped fashion my views.
-
Writing 'William Shakespeare's Star Wars' was a fun exercise in mixing just the right amount of the Bard with just the right amount of everyone's favorite galaxy far, far away.
-
Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.
-
There is not a right too long denied to which we do not aspire in order to achieve; there is not a wrong too long endured that we are not determined to abolish.
-
When you're writing a book, you don't really think about it critically. You don't want to know too well what you're doing. First, you write the book, then you find the justification for it.
-
On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.
-
It was failing part of my Ph.D. that led me into novel-writing. By then I was 29, had remarried and had a second baby. It struck me that I'd lost my path in life and I felt frustrated. That's when I started to write.
-
Try imagining James Joyce not writing about being a Catholic.
-
I think that the idea that I'm writing for many more people than I ever imagined has created a certain general responsibility that is literary and political. There's even pride involved, in not wanting to fall short of what I did before.
-
I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'
-
I did my military service from 1989 - 92 and I was never shot at or had to fire on anybody. I was very lucky. I was more involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence.
-
I love writing. Given a choice, after directing for all these years, and if given an army of talented directors, I would not direct at all.
-
Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes.
-
I've been writing fiction probably since I was about 6 years old, so it's something that is second nature to me now. I just sit down and start writing. I don't sit down and start writing and it comes out perfectly - it's a process.
-
There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.
-
If I weren't a performer, I would be still be writing and songwriting. Plus, I also really want to get into producing.
-
Let us remember: One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.
-
'Holes' was my favorite book ever. So you know when you love a book and you hear it's being made into a movie and it makes you a little annoyed at first? But I would've loved to play the Shia LaBeouf role in that movie when I was younger. I just wanted to be the rebellious kid on the old digging camp.
-
It's difficult for me to have a large story, a very large story - a novel is a large story. I'm used to writing and doing these little miniature paintings.
-
I just loved going fast. So I started out with Alka-Seltzer and soda water in a bottle and attached it to the skateboard. That didn't do much. I would try a leaf blower. I was searching for anything that would go fast. Then, the lawnmower engine.
-
Affliction comes to us, not to make us sad but sober; not to make us sorry but wise.
-
'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies – they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.
-
The cool thing for me is, I go to a lot of conventions - a lot of science fiction conventions like Comic-Con - and there are always a lot of attendants of color. And I think some people believe that black people or people of color are not into science fiction or hero shows or genre shows.
-
For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.
