A Quote by Will Self

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

Will Self

Quote Topics

Age Anonymous Between Character Class Depend Exactly Exactly What Existence Fiction Force Gender Human Human Existence Intimacy Know Mean Messy Moments Much Offers Race Reader Those Transcendence Us Writer

Quote Author

Will Self
English - Author
Born: September 26, 1961

What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim "You know exactly what I mean!" depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.

Will Self

There can be no more thrilling idea of intimacy that 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 exactly the person who wants to read what I have written...

Will Self

Intimacy is important in my work because I don't understand existence without intimacy. All of us are dependent on other people - and in ways we don't know. You cross the street and assume that person isn't crazy, they don't want to mow me down with their car. I don't know that person but I am already in a relationship with them. I am asking them to abide by the traffic laws. If they decided not to, I'd be dead. Even in those anonymous ways, we're in relationships.

Claudia Rankine

Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.

Will Self

Marriage is a way to avoid intimacy. It is a trick to create a formal relationship. Intimacy is informal. If a marriage arises out of intimacy it is beautiful but if you are hoping that intimacy will arise out of marriage, you are hoping in vain. Of course, I know that many people, millions of people, have settled for marriage rather than for intimacy - because intimacy is growth and it is painful.

Rajneesh

Fiction, at its best, is a radical act of intimacy. It seeks to join, to merge, to know deeply; and, as with intimacy, there is a way in which it cannot be faked.

Stacey D'Erasmo

I always used to say to my ex-girlfriends that I could never take a good photograph of them, because there was too much of an intimacy between us, but actually the real thing is, if there's a proper intimacy between you... I find it really compelling and exciting - it's quite good foreplay.

Rankin

With fame there is a crosswire between intensity and intimacy. You have decoy intimacy, but you are also very much alone.

Mike Myers

Fear destroys intimacy. It distances us from each other; or makes us cling to each other, which is the death of freedom.... Only love can create intimacy, and freedom too, for when all hearts are one, nothing else has to be one--neither clothes nor age; neither sex nor sexual preference; race nor mind-set.

William Sloane Coffin

I think our lack of intimacy with the land has initiated a lack of intimacy with each other. What we perceive as non- human, outside of us, is actually in direct relationship with us.

Terry Tempest Williams

Every novel is an equal collaboration between the writer and the reader and it is the only place in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.

Paul Auster

Consciousness-raising is at the very least supposed to bring about an intimacy, but what it seems instead to bring about are the trappings of intimacy, the illusion of intimacy, a semblance of intimacy.

Nora Ephron

As a reader, you’re often inside one or more character heads, so you know what they’re feeling, even if they can’t exactly say it, or they say it so obliquely that the other characters don’t catch it. Readers are frequently reminded of the gulf between what people say and what they mean, and such moments prod us to become more attuned to gesture, tone, and language.

Will Schwalbe

I know that in writer's rooms across North America, there are still conversations about how much is too much when it comes to intimacy between, in my case, two men. That's an insane conversation to be having.