Andrew O'Hagan Quotes

I'm as Scottish as they come.

The French have the reputation of being arrogant. I don't think it's arrogance but a certain authenticity.

I hate it when people romanticize Scotland.

I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.

I don't feel we need to be independent for me to feel confident in my Scottish identity. I think Scotland is pretty comfortable in its identity. We won't need independence to preserve it... if we don't become independent, it won't disappear; it isn't under existential threat.

Like a lot of expatriate Scots, when you want to be called Scottish, it's useful. I see myself as being without nationality, as a European: my region is Scotland; my nationality is European - isn't that a very Alex Salmond thing to say?

You have to live and breathe Scotland if you're 'Scotsman' editor.

I'll always have a relationship with Scotland.

I still feel very Scottish.

This country has such little sense of itself sometimes, I'm astonished. America is one of the biggest myth-making countries, whether we're talking about how many books are published, how many movies we make. But the greatest myth of all is what America is.

Our Scottish theory ... is that every country has need of Scotchmen, but that Scotland has no need of the citizens of any other country.

I am legitimately Scottish. I can officially say — yes. Yeah, I am from Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland.

The deeper I went into culture, the more confused I got. So I needed something more real. I said, "Okay, from now on, my country will be cinema."

I think I'll be Scottish in every movie I write. They always try to talk me out of it, but Woody Allen is always a nebbish New Yorker. Why shouldn't I be a goofy Glaswegian?

We Scots have a fierce pride in the things we do that others can never appreciate. I am the British No. 1, but I would prefer to be the British No. 1 from Scotland every time.

Sometimes you have to disclaim your country and inhabit another before you can return to your own.

Germany is a country that has absolutely had to since the Second World War ask itself massive moral questions. And it's reforged its identity based on culture. I mean, the amount of artists living and working in Berlin is unparalleled. It's one of the strongest economies, not only in Europe, but globally, and it's because of its understanding of the importance of culture.

America has an almost obscene infatuation with itself. Has there ever been a big, powerful country that is as patriotic as America? And patriotic in the tinniest way, with so much flag waving? You'd really think we were some poor little republic, and that if one person lost his religion for one hour, the whole thing would crumble. America is the real religion in this country.

I hope in my book [My Beloved World], that the sense that I really feel connected comes through.

I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country.

America is a younger country than England, obviously, and as self-awareness is forming in America - are we a collection of immigrants, are we a load of Italians and Germans and Jews and Brits and Irish, or are we a country with a soul and an identity? - there was a subliminal sense, they knew that the writers would be the ones who would answer those questions.

For over 200 years this has been a special country. A unique place where anyone from anywhere can achieve anything. But now millions of Americans feel like they're being left behind. Insecure in their future and unsafe in the face of terrorism.

KILT, n. A costume sometimes worn by Scotchmen in America and Americans in Scotland.

It's great that after 700 years William Wallace has finally had a proper burial. He did so much for the country. You should be proud of what you have achieved through devolution.

Superheroes are also about immigrants. Superman, the prototype of all superheroes, is a prototypical immigrant. His homeland was in crisis, so his parents sent him to America in search of a better life. He has two names, one American, Clark Kent, and the other foreign, Kal-El. He wears two sets of clothes and lives in between two cultures. He loves his new country, but a part of him still longs for his old one.