Will Self

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

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Quotes

So I was smacked up on the Prime Minister's jet – big deal.
- Interviewed by The Independent on Sunday, April 1997. [1]

The éminence cerise, the bolster behind the throne.
- The Independent on Sunday, August 8, 1999
- Of the Queen Mother.

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.
- The Guardian, May 9, 2007. [2]

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.
- The Guardian, May 9, 2007. [3]

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 [4]

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.

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.

My ex wants to divide up the contents of the former marital home by coming round, when I’m not there, putting a red dot on absolutely anything he wants, then getting me to organise it all into a place where he can have it picked up. Anyone else had this?
Anyway. #MeToo.
I have C-PTSD. I wonder why? His "compassionate writings" on mental illness make me want to throw up.
I changed the locks long ago. He’s been litigating against me for more than two years, and I’m broke. I can’t afford a restraining order.
- From a series of tweets by Deborah Orr, Self's ex-wife, quoted in "Will Self accused of cruelty in divorce row with Deborah Orr" The Times (21 September 2018). Orr died from cancer a year later. Her twitter account has been deleted.