Scottish - Novelist | 1968 -
High culture isn't what it used to be.
Andrew O'Hagan
CultureHighUsed
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.
PoetryPeopleVoiceBlindLoving
Every literary culture has among its first bearings the 'blether' of animals who seek to make sense of human existence.
CultureAnimalsHumanFirstSeek
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.
AgeChildrenWorldBelieveHuman
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 speech and power we rely on.
PowerTimeSpeechForgetSometimes
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.
ChildrenGreatPoliticalTalking
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.
GoodLiveWritingMoralWillPlaces
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.
GoodLiveSocietyKindPoliticians
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.
TeamPoliticalNewGrowingNothing
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.
ChangeDemocracyVictoryAmericaHow
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 all there, part of the story of an English people whose grandparents never had it so good.
GoodDreamsServiceHappyPeople
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 people who aim to become middle class if possible.
TodayVisionBestWaitingPeople
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Andrew O'Hagan quotes