Will Self Quotes

Shakespeare speaks for the human heart but Dickens speaks for the social man and for injustices.

Literature is the denunciation of the times in which one lives.

Stories in which the destruction of society occurs are explorations of social fears and issues that filmmakers, novelists, playwrights, painters have been examining for a long time.

The reason to do any barking - well, the reason for me - is that 'Three Billboards' feels so off about so many things. It's one of those movies that really do think they're saying something profound about human nature and injustice.

We humans are still a very primitive culture, and it's one of the traps we've fallen into over the course of our lives - to forget our history. That's why George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is so profound. It chronicles our short memory.

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.

It is because nations tend towards stupidity and baseness that mankind moves so slowly; it is because individuals have a capacity for better things that it moves at all.

I thought if I could create a convincing cat I could say and do anything I wanted on the human condition.

People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.

My work is not so much a direct commentary as it is an open-ended observation of the absurdities around us.

You know, you can be really quite subversive in popular fiction, which is capable of taking on big issues of politics, war, the rise and fall of commercial dynasties.

I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.

I think that's the great thing about zombies, is, you know, going back to even 'Night of the Living Dead,' they've always been a tool for kind of holding up a mirror to us and showing us something about ourselves that we might not otherwise know.

In one aspect, my works record the history of the development of Chinese society. Concern about the situation of Chinese reality is one important theme of my works. I am trying to ask, 'How does our society develop? What are the problems in our society? Where is our direction leading?'

I think some of the things I deal with Hopper probably has dealt with also, since it's somewhat the same environment and I have pretty strong reactions to what this country looks like. It looks pretty dull and spare, and you like this and dislike it and it's very complicated.

Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.

Man, it seems to me, is not in history: he is history.

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

The world is very different today than it was in 1968.

If we compare the present time with former ages, we find that the same tendencies and desires have at all times governed states and peoples.

The history of the world demonstrates that man becomes what we call civilized by increasing his wants.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

Modern Times. It’s a very good historical book about history.

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

The intelligence which has converted the brother of the wolf into the faithful guardian of the flock ought to be able to do something towards curbing the instincts of savagery in civilized men.