I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow. Martin Amis More Quotes by Martin Amis More Quotes From Martin Amis Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands. Martin Amis beliefreality Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual. Martin Amis medievalislamchristianity Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows. Martin Amis elbowsperfectway I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write. Martin Amis registeri-canwriting Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal. Martin Amis assuminglife-iswriting In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong. Martin Amis aggressorsfighting 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. Martin Amis agefacesmen Amis is acutely, vibrantly sensitive to the different registers of laughter. He knows that it can be the most affirming and uniquely human sound, and also the most sinister and animalistic one. He understands every note of every octave that separates the liberating shout of mirth from the cackle of a bully or the snigger of a sadist. Martin Amis bullylaughterbook One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back. Martin Amis selfishnessfatherchildren Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour. Martin Amis curvesnovelistscareers That certain snobbery of certainly the Parisian - combined with a complete denial of your historical legacy, is just awful. That's a funny thing about France. Saul Bellow wrote somewhere that he saw right through the French. He lived there. He wrote The Adventures of Augie March in Paris, and there's no one better than him to say what's unbearable about the French. Martin Amis legacyhistoricaladventure I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves. Martin Amis retreatgeniusthinking When communism failed, it wasn't a good idea that had gone wrong, it was a bad idea that had been sustained with incredible determination in the face of all the commonsense arguments, and at the cost of 20 million lives at least, in Russia, to build the socialist Utopia. Martin Amis russiadeterminationideas People look at fame and feel deprived if they haven't got it, feeling that this is a basic, almost a human right, a civil right. And also feel the same way about wealth, I suppose - why haven't I got it? Martin Amis feelingspeoplelooks It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters - which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that's what I mean by the pleasure principle. Martin Amis love-youcharacterchildren So I am lonely, but not alone, like everybody else. Martin Amis i-am-lonelynot-alonelonely Never content just to be, America is also obliged to mean; America signifies, hence its constant and riveting vulnerability to illusion. Martin Amis illusionmeanamerica Writers spend too much time among dead things. I thought that was profound and actually true, that you're trying to pump life into something that is inanimate. You see what a sort of audacious thing it is to move these sort of imaginary people around in a very stylized and patterned world. Martin Amis profoundpeoplemoving The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head. Martin Amis paperwritingcharacter Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough. Martin Amis arms-raceweaponsenough
