Quotes by Andrew O'Hagan

About Andrew O'Hagan:

Andrew O'Hagan is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author. He is also an Editor at Large of Esquire , London Review of Books & Critic at large for New York T Magazine. Andrew is currently a creative writing fellow at King's College London.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Like children all over the world, by the age of 10 I'd come to believe that most of the really humane creatures were not really human at all.

Andrew O'Hagan

Interviewing is not a democratic art.

Andrew O'Hagan

A living museum must surely see itself as a locus of argument. A breathing art institution is not a lockup but a moveable feast.

Andrew O'Hagan

The working class of England today have no vision of society beyond the acquisitive - no version of themselves or their habits as anything other than transitional, on their way up or on their way out. The working class, at best, is a waiting room for...

Andrew O'Hagan

We now live in the era of fake consensus, or phoney populism, a condition in which galleries and homes are seen to succeed best where they manage feelings of non-difference.

Andrew O'Hagan

When I was very young, I thought the theatre was a place where higher beings went about their celestial business, as if they knew nothing of ordinary life and its political mysteries.

Andrew O'Hagan

Events in America show the extent to which democracy there is fuelled by populism - Barack Obama's victory is a manifestation not of Washington's need for change, but of America's. That is not how democracy works in England.

Andrew O'Hagan

I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work.

Andrew O'Hagan

The working class of England take their deracination completely for granted. Disenchantment is the happy code that informs every byway of the underclass: service jobs, celebrity dreams, Lotto wins, leisured poverty on pre-crunch credit cards, it's al...

Andrew O'Hagan

In Britain, the great hidden secret of talking animals and children's literature is how political it was in its bones, beneath the obvious cuteness.

Andrew O'Hagan

Novelists are no more moral or certain than anybody else; we are ideologically adrift, and if we are any good then our writing will live in several places at once. That is both our curse and our charm.

Andrew O'Hagan

Everybody has an idea of the kind of society they'd like to live in, and I would like to live in one where our senior politicians were spirited and original and possibly even good at what they do.

Andrew O'Hagan

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

Andrew O'Hagan

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival a...

Andrew O'Hagan

When I was growing up, there was a feeling in one's living room as much as in one's local gallery that a little elitism was good for the soul.

Andrew O'Hagan

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

Andrew O'Hagan

I don't believe in the meteoric culture of anxiety, generally. Obviously, some people have it, some people are crippled by it, but most of the novelists I've ever known are in love with influence. They thrive on it.

Andrew O'Hagan

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.

Andrew O'Hagan

When I look back at my childhood on the Ayrshire coast, I recall a basic devotion to the idea that human nature and national character are as unknowable as the weather's rationale.

Andrew O'Hagan

I had always been literary, in the sense of loving poetry and discovering novels, but I found my voice, as they say, in an office full of elderly people who looked after blind ex-servicemen.

Andrew O'Hagan

Author Bio

  • NameAndrew O'Hagan
  • DescriptionScottish novelist, journalist, academic
  • Born1968
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWriter; Literary Critic; Journalist
  • AwardsJames Tait Black Memorial Prize; Los Angeles Times Book Prize