A Quote by Will Self

Sometimes it occurs to me that the job of a serious cultural critic mostly consists in telling the generality of people that their opinions - on films, on books, on all manner of widgets, gadgets and even the latest electronic fidgets - simply aren't up to scratch.
In our benighted age, when films about amusement park rides and electronic fidgets scoop the honours, perhaps Hollywood redux is the best we can hope for.
The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.
courage isn't simply a matter of leading charges: sometimes it consists in speaking up, sometimes in stoic silence, sometimes in forging ahead, sometimes in circumspection, and sometimes in nothing less than preserving our own humanity.
One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places... But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They may make me feel, but I can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it.
When a critic sets himself up as an arbiter of morality, a judge of the matter and not the manner of a work, he is no longer a critic; he is a censor.
You find very few critics who approach their job with a combination of information and enthusiasm and humility that makes for a good critic. But there is nothing wrong with critics as long as people don't pay any attention to them. I mean, nobody wants to put them out of a job and a good critic is not necessarily a dead critic. It's just that people take what a critic says as a fact rather than an opinion, and you have to know whether the opinion of the critic is informed or uninformed, intelligent of stupid -- but most people don't take the trouble.
I am my biggest critic. Even in films where people said they liked me, I have disliked myself.
I am happy and grateful that I drive a Range Rover, have all the latest Apple gadgets, wear the best of brands but none of it has any bearing on the person I am. I simply look at these things as the perks of my profession.
I just kind of shoot the finger to the critics. I don't give sh - what a critic says. To me a critic is some loser who has no idea... someone with an opinion. We all have opinions.
We're these guys that are very tech-savvy, so people tend to expect us to say our favorite gadgets are thing like the latest iPhone or the latest app or something like that. Adam is pretty much like that. As far as myself, I'm the kind of guy that tends to go for the absolute simplest things.
The nineteenth century is a turning point in history, simply on account of the work of two men, Darwin and Renan, the one the critic of the Book of Nature, the other the critic of the books of God. Not to recognise this is to miss the meaning of one of the most important eras in the progress of the world.
All I am in private life is a literary critic and historian, that's my job...And I'm prepared to say on that basis if anyone thinks the Gospels are either legends or novels, then that person is simply showing his incompetence as a literary critic. I've read a great many novels and I know a fair amount about the legends that grew up among early people, and I know perfectly well the Gospels are not that kind of stuff.
When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.
A lot of things people see as innovative are faddish and fleeting, and I'm simply telling you, staying power like broadcasting has is more important in the end than the latest app you can download.
Electronic books are ideal for people who value the information contained in them, or who have vision problems, or who like to read on the subway, or who do not want other people to see how they are amusing themselves, or who have storage and clutter issues, but they are useless for people who are engaged in an intense, lifelong love affair with books. Books that we can touch; books that we can smell; books that we can depend on.
If you want to be real about it, the fact that any actor books a job is a one-in-a-million shot. I've been so fortunate to have worked on even a few films, so, no, I don't wake up feeling bad.
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