A Quote by Will Self

The British and American literary worlds operate in an odd kind of symbiosis: our critics think our contemporary novelists are not the stuff of greatness whereas certain contemporary Americans indubitably are. Their critics often advance the exact opposite: British fiction is cool, American naff.

Will Self

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Advance American British Certain Contemporary Cool Critics Exact Exact Opposite Fiction Greatness Kind Literary Novelists Odd Often Operate Opposite Our Stuff Symbiosis Think Whereas Worlds

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Will Self
English - Author
Born: September 26, 1961

I think I've actually benefited from Australia being a kind of combination of both British and American culture. We kind of got the best of both British and American television and books, science fiction and fantasy, and so on. So I'm familiar with a lot of, for example, American books and television that a British author of my generation might not be.

Garth Nix

I think Hellblazer is quite unique. In a comic world dominated by American characters (nothing wrong with that per se) Constantine was unashamedly British. A certain kind of miserablist British

Peter Milligan

If contemporary literary fiction doesn't read a bit like science fiction then it's probably not all that contemporary, is it

Warren Ellis

It would not be fair to the critics of Rotary, who include some of the most brilliant of the British and American writers, to charge them with prejudice.

Paul P. Harris

I find a difference in British spy fiction and American spy fiction. In the American version, it's more militaristic, partly because the CIA has more of the military makeup. Whereas MI6 is more of a cerebral, intelligence-based, relationship-based service, i.e., all they do is recruit people to get information out of them.

Charles Cumming

Evidently, there are many great American writers. But sometimes it can feel as though American fiction is dominated by relatively linear narrative form, with a heavy emphasis on psychological realism. If you limit yourself to a certain kind of American literary fiction, it's easy to forget about the different kinds of books that are being written. You can forget to be ambitious, both as a reader and a writer.

Katie Kitamura

As you begin your tour of the United States, you may as well know that one American national trait which irritates many Americans and must be convenient for our critics is that we relentlessly advertise our imperfections.

Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr.

I guess, on my list, going back to some old American stuff and British stuff that I used to love in the '80s, would be a British show called Dad's Army, which recently just turned into a movie.

Rhys Darby

Edmund Wilson was our greatest American literary critic because he was more than a literary critic: He was a fearless, even radical judge of the society he lived in. (See, for example, _A Piece of My Mind_; _The Cold War and the Income Tax_; the introduction to _Patriotic Gore_.) Our conventional critics cannot forgive him for those scandalous lapses in good taste.

Edward Abbey

Some of our strongest critics, especially inside the church, said we had turned our backs on traditional gospel music and were just contemporary R&B artists exploiting Christian lyrics for the money. But that's not true.

Kirk Franklin

People often presume I'm from whatever country they're from. So Americans presume I'm American and the British presume I'm British. And they're surprised to discover I actually am Australian. And actually some Australians are surprised too.

Garth Nix

Some critics said, 'Hey, why are you writing historical novels?' I say they're not historical, they're contemporary, because people walking around who lived through this, even a little bit, they carry it inside. The contemporary isn't just what you can see now.

Per Petterson

I considered our British comrades to rank with the finest men and women of any armed service in the world. And I know that my fellow American soldiers - and those of the other coalition countries under my command - valued very highly the professional expertise, capability, courage, and determination of our British partners on the battlefield.

David Petraeus

America has had an influence on me, as has going out with a Cuban-American guy and having lots of American friends. But I am still fundamentally British and speak with a British accent and feel very English.

Lily Cole

I can see how Americans misconstrue British reserve, and I can see how British people misconstrue American enthusiasm. I think I'm somewhere in between the two. Although I'm outgoing, I'm also very private.

Julianne Moore

It is a pity that so many Americans today think of the Indian as a romantic or comic figure in American history without contemporary significance. In fact, the Indian plays much the same role in our society that the Jews played in Germany. Like the miner’s canary, the Indian marks the shift from fresh air to poison gas in our political atmosphere; and our treatment of Indians, even more than our treatment of other minorities, reflects the rise and fall in our democratic faith.

Felix S. Cohen

A Quote by Will Self

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