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Martin Amis Quotes

1949–2023 England

Sir Martin Louis Amis (25 August 1949 – 19 May 2023) was a British novelist, essayist and short story writer. He was the son of Kingsley Amis.

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Random Martin Amis quote

90 quotes

I try to like the way the world is changing, but there seems to be no extra room for me inside.

Success (1978)

Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

It used to be said that by a certain age a man had the face that he deserved. Nowadays, he has the face he can afford.

Visiting Mrs. Nabokov and Other Excursions (1993)

It would be inaccurate to say that John Fowles is a middlebrow writer who sometimes hopes he is a highbrow: it has never occurred to him to believe otherwise. There is a difference, morally.

The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

I think it was Montherlant who said that happiness writes white: it doesn't show up on the page.

London Fields (1989)

The doltish euphemism of conglomerate America.

The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

Our vulgar delight in American vulgarity.

The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

I know what his poetry will be about. What poetry is always about. The cruelty of the poet's mistress.

London Fields (1989)

I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bear to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now there’s nothing for you here.

Success (1978)

The night was electric — the night was in italics.

Success (1978)

What is this televisual mastery of Reagan's? It is a celebration of good intentions and unexceptional abilities. His style is one of hammy self-effacement, a wry dismay at his own limited talents and their drastic elevation.

The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

Only it was much, much worse than that. In fact, words alone cannot adduce how much worse it was than that. September 11 was an attack on words: we felt a general deficit.

For those thousands in the south tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.

Fear and loathing (2001)

Sitting there beside the bookcase, trying to read, in a growing panic of self-consciousness. Why? Because reading presupposed a future.

London Fields (1989)

Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy we have all agreed to go along with.

Novelists in Interview (1985)

I think I'm losing my bottle. I think I'm going tonto.

Success (1978)

We kept nearly bumping into each other, unavoidably. I wished we could stop avoiding each other long enough to agree to avoid each other properly.

Success (1978)

Bujak spoke of Einstein as if he were God's literary critic, God being a poet. I, more stolidly, tend to suspect that God is a novelist — a garrulous and deeply unwholesome one too.

Einstein's Monsters (1987)

I'd like to be remembered as someone who kept the comic novel going for another generation or so.

Off the Page: Martin Amis (2003)

Violence must come; America must have catharsis.

Fear and loathing (2001)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Martin Amis (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.