America is proud of what it does to its writers, the way it breaks and bedevils them, rendering them deluded or drunken or dead by their own hands. To overpower its tender spirits makes America feel tough. Careers are generally short. Martin Amis More Quotes by Martin Amis More Quotes From Martin Amis The champions of militant Islam are, of course, misogynists, woman-haters; they are also misologists - haters of reason. Their armed doctrine is little more than a chaotic penal code underscored by impotent dreams of genocide. And, like all religions, it is a massive agglutination of stock response, of cliches, of inherited and unexamined formulations. Martin Amis champion islam dream What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style. Martin Amis perseverance style wife The true manipulator never has a reputation for manipulating. Martin Amis manipulator true-man reputation When you’ve lost all your play, guess what love becomes. Work. Work that gets harder every hour. Martin Amis hours play lost Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers. Martin Amis reader dumb writing I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow. Martin Amis writing long hands Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism. Martin Amis envy balls moral It's an ancient idea that the leader of a democracy should not be the cleverest but the most average. That's an arguable point, but the world has decided otherwise - except in America, where it still divides the country right down the middle. Martin Amis average country ideas Style isn't something added on; it's intrinsic to the perceptions and the way you see life. Martin Amis style perception way These are the Seven Deadly Sins: Avarice, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Sloth. These are the seven deadly sins: venality, paranoia, insecurity, excess, carnality, contempt, boredom. Martin Amis boredom envy pride Since it is no longer permissible to disparage any single faith or creed, let us start disparaging all of them... A religion is a belief system with no basis in reality whatever. Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. Martin Amis atheism religious reality If you want to know the real meaning of pornography, it is the utter dissociation of love and sex, the banishment of love from the sexual arena. Martin Amis real want sex People are always talking on their phones, or looking at their phones, because they don't want to be alone with their thoughts. Martin Amis phones talking people You can kill time in a number of ways but it always depends on the kind of time you're fighting: some time is unkillable, immortal Martin Amis fighting time numbers Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. Martin Amis atheism religious religion Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual. Martin Amis wounds spiritual needs Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. Martin Amis black love world Dickens is a much misunderstood and mis-approached writer, in that he tends to be read, particularly in the twentieth century, as a social commentator - like the great Victorians, a realist in his way. But he isn't at all like that. His genre is actually more like a fairy tale - weird transformations, long voyages from which people come back altered, parental mysteries, semi-magical twists. Martin Amis genre-is long people It's without doubt my main subject. The way masculinity can go wrong. And I'm something of a gynocrat in a utopian kind of way. Martin Amis kind doubt way This (writing) is the love of your life. It's what I want to do when I wake up. Nothing feels so absorbing, so fulfilling. Martin Amis wake-up want writing
