I'm not interested in writers who are overcome with certainty, with single-mindedness, or with a sense of how consistent and morally upstanding they are. My writers are in the thick of it and they seek the truth, rather than embody it, and sometimes they find truths that don't sit palatably or easily together. That's life. That's personality. And that's writing.
Andrew O'HaganArt you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp
Andrew O'HaganMy solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependence on someone to distract your attention. You are living without it: you are on vacation.
Andrew O'HaganThe idea that people in novels should be more sympathetic than people in life simply baffles me.
Andrew O'HaganThe first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone.
Andrew O'Hagan