Andrew O'Hagan Quotes

I moved to Los Angeles when I was about 20, all by myself. It was exciting. I had this moment when I felt like I needed to put on my big-boy pants and just make that leap to see what would happen.

I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.

'Deadline' is the story of a young man forced to discover who he is, and what's important in life, during the short span of his senior year in high school.

I think my parents had in mind that I would settle down at quite a young age, but I decided that being a housewife in a big country house wasn't for me. I wanted to leave the country, head for London and see what the world had to offer.

Until I was pursuing my collegiate education, I was in Madurai with my parents. Bengaluru was the first place where I was independent. So, the city is very close to my heart.

I think that New York liberated me in the sense that I moved here when I was 18, so it was a fresh perspective on life. I had been living in L.A. my whole life and I had never lived anywhere else, so being away from family and really making a name for myself was huge for me.

I've always wanted to be my own person. Even when I was 'Noah who rode horses,' I wanted to be Noah Cyrus, not anyone else or a family member.

Most of my world is in London, and I feel like this is where I went mad and ended up finding myself.

I actually find Los Angeles, in the daily sense, a quite normal place to live. It is certainly contingent upon how normal the person living there might be. I don't think you have to look far in any city to see people looking for the right answer in the wrong place.

I was a very young 21-year-old. I was very scared. I spent three years at university in west London, and I went into central London three times. I came from Shropshire, and just having travelled that far was enough ambition.

There might be some hours of loneliness. But there was something wonderful even in loneliness. At least you belonged to yourself when you were lonely.

Well, in Angel of Hope, Amber ends up going in her sister's stead. The focus of that book and the next one coming out, Angel of Love, is how she finds her way out of her sister's shadow and into herself. That's really what those two novels are based on.

From in the shadow she calls. And in the shadow she finds a way, finds a way. And in the shadow she crawls, clutching her faded photograph. My image under her thumb. Yes with a message for my heart. She’s been everybody else’s girl maybe one day she’ll be her own.

I have a very great fear of love. It is so personal. Let each bird fly with its own wings, and each fish swim its own course.--Morning brings more than love. And I want to be true to the morning.

Being single is about celebrating and appreciating your own space that you're in.

A lot of women want to be married and have kids one day, but before we get there, it's so important to establish who you are, find yourself, and live in that for a minute before you become somebody's wife and mother.

The script changed so much over seven months and just had loads and loads of re-writes. I tried to tailor things to what I was interested in, like the relationship with the dad changed quite a lot because I thought one of the things when you're a young guy one of your biggest fears is this irrational fear of walking in your dad's footsteps and living the same life as him. I thought, even if your dad's a good guy, you just want to assert your independence on everything and it causes these irrational sort of rages.

We all have this moment, when your folks first see you as someone not growing up to be them.

I've just recently gotten divorced so I have a whole new horizon to conquer.

There has to be a balance, Vin," Elend said. "Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be." He sighed. "But for now," he said, nodding to the side, "we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.

You've decided to love me for eternity, I'm still deciding who I want to be today.

I am not just my hair; I proved to myself that I am a cast of characters. I'm feeling freer to venture out of the 'look' people know me for.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

Once you move away from home, it's never quite the same again. You expect everything to be just as you left it, and it never is. It's almost the first step into adulthood, realising you've got to make your own way.

We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.