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

I've been asked which of the other arts novel-writing is most like, and I have come to believe it is acting. Of course, in terms of pattern it can be like music, in terms of structure it can be like painting, but the job to me is most like acting.

Andrew O'Hagan

When I was growing up, my idea of a writer was someone like Sven Hassel, that mysterious Danish author who wrote thrillers about men clambering over walls and getting tangled in barbed wire.

Andrew O'Hagan

Long before the arrival of reality TV - before speed cameras, before recording angels on buses and lampposts - I felt I was living in a country that already knew how to watch itself. It was journalism that held the responsibility for seeing who we we...

Andrew O'Hagan

A theatre is not a blank page for editorial, it is not a soapbox or a Tannoy system: it is a conscience that wakes with what is happening in the space, and wakes further still in response to what people are making of it.

Andrew O'Hagan

'Reality' is a notion that journalists take for granted.

Andrew O'Hagan

Every literary culture has among its first bearings the 'blether' of animals who seek to make sense of human existence.

Andrew O'Hagan

I probably owe my political dismay to New Labour, but also my growing sense that the satirical shape of human affairs is international and historical, not glued to the tawdry ambitions of a team of politicians who represent nothing but themselves.

Andrew O'Hagan

High culture isn't what it used to be.

Andrew O'Hagan

The characters in 'Be Near Me' come from a genuine place, a Britain that is more than one country and more than one ideal.

Andrew O'Hagan

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

Andrew O'Hagan

I always knew I would come to London. I loved Glasgow, but it seemed filled with echoes of my parents' lives, and sometimes you just want a city of your own.

Andrew O'Hagan

Writing a novel is an act of self-annihilation as much as self-discovery. You can kill whole appetites and flood whole depths while plumbing them, but if you are serious about it you also get to put something into the world that wasn't quite there be...

Andrew O'Hagan

There's a horrible fallacy that exists in the popular discussion of fiction these days: the idea that a successful central character need be 'likeable' or 'sympathetic'. It is surely more important that they be human, no? More crucial that they breat...

Andrew O'Hagan

I was 10 when I realised I couldn't stand football. I'd tried, obviously, before this - no one wants to give in to social pariah-hood without a fight. I had stood frozen on pitches, done some running about and shouted a lot, as though I cared.

Andrew O'Hagan

I wasn't like other boys. At any rate, I wasn't like my three elder brothers: they excelled at football and they were like other boys, going up to bed each night hugging annuals filled with stories about the glories of Pele and Danny McGrain.

Andrew O'Hagan

Fans of football and fans of nationhood have a similar zeal. Read the fanzines: their contributors could find a needle-sized diss in a haystack of compliments, and their passions are fundamentalist.

Andrew O'Hagan

You'll find that no pride is greater than the pride that comes with being thick. Britain is filled with people who are really proud of their stupidity.

Andrew O'Hagan

Long before I was a writer, when I was just a haphazard reader and a dreamer of stories, I learnt about an influential book by Harold Bloom. 'The Anxiety of Influence', published in 1973 when I was five years old, is taken up with the terrifying infl...

Andrew O'Hagan

Once upon a time, I thought that politics was the name we gave to our higher instincts. That was before Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when I was 11 years old.

Andrew O'Hagan

We sometimes forget that human invention can also be a subject of human invention: that might seem a modern notion, or a postmodern one, but novelists have taken time - sometimes time out from their realist fixations - to source and satirise the spee...

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