Andrew O'Hagan People Quotations

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.

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

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.

I don't believe in the meteoric culture of anxiety, generally. Obviously, some people have it, some people are crippled by it, but most of the novelists I've ever known are in love with influence. They thrive on it.

The idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.

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.

As an old creative industry full of cruelty and moral sense, British journalism once flourished on the imperative that people required the truth in order to survive. But people don't require that now. They want sensation and they want it for nothing.

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.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.