Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.
Will SelfRead
Here we meet, on the page, naked and unadorned: shorn of class, race, gender, sexual identity, age and nationality.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the idea of equality and commonality among individuals by stripping away societal labels.
Will Self's quote reflects the notion that when we communicate or express ourselves on a blank page, we reveal our true selves without the influences of societal constructs such as class, race, and gender. This suggests that at our core, we share a fundamental humanity that transcends the identities that society imposes upon us, promoting a sense of unity and understanding among all individuals.
Themes
EqualityIdentityHumanityCommunicationSelf-Expression
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during discussions on social justice to highlight the need for equality.
More from Will Self
All quotes βWhen anyone starts out to do something creative - especially if it seems a little unusual - they seek approval, often from those least inclined to give it. But a creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism - you learn this as you go on.
Will SelfRead
What fiction offers us is an intimacy shorn of the messy contingencies of human existence - gender, race, class or age. Those moments of transcendence when we exclaim 'You know exactly what I mean!' depend for much of their force on the anonymous character of the intimacy between writer and reader.
Will SelfRead
Sometimes, when I hear people without experience of addiction blame addicts for their behaviour, I feel like saying to them: 'You simply don't understand - how can a child be held responsible for doing such a dreadful thing to himself?' But then again, at other times I have to acknowledge: it was done wilfully.
Will SelfRead
Death, the real simile for disease - for when we are ill, do we not always feel like we are dying, even if it's only a little? - remains, despite our secularism, the most metaphoricised phenomenon of all.
Will SelfRead
The marvellous thing about writing, whether it be fiction or journalism, is that it is simultaneously the most intimate and the most anonymous of meetings between people. It is profoundly intimate in reaching into the psyche of another, at the same time as being devoid of social characteristics, cultural characteristics, economic characteristics.
Will SelfRead
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