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.

William Woodard Self (born 26 September 1961) is an English satirical novelist, newspaper columnist and broadcaster.

Quotes

  • So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal.
    • Interviewed by The Independent on Sunday, April 1997.
  • There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy than 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.
I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.
  • I have a healthy appetite for solitude. If you don't, you have no business being a writer.
  • 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.
    • Quoted by The Guardian
  • Wealth is a form of power in our society. With great power comes great responsibility. If you have too much wealth, ipso facto, you have too much power - therefore you have too much responsibility - and you're a kind of dictator.
    • The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, October 1st, 2008.
  • Things are only boring if you are boring.
    • 'Room 101', BBC2, March 19th, 2001.
  • Campaigning at a school in Enfield in 2001, Tony Blair was caught unawares by a feisty British Asian sixth-former. Suddenly this apparition arose before him, demolishing Blair's points as speedily as he tried to make them. This time around the New Labour machine haven't wanted to risk any of that. The Emperor has been ferried from Potemkin village to Potemkin hospital, and before he arrives a rigged rent-a-crowd of "ordinary people" are brought in to wave little flags. Journalists have been "embedded" - undoubtedly the cadres were hoping that these trusties would begin to sympathise with the man upon whom their jobs depended [and] they'd cease to notice how much of what he said was utter shit.
    • Psychic Geography 82 Fear and loathing on the Election trail, The Independent Magazine.
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