No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. Martin Amis More Quotes by Martin Amis More Quotes From Martin Amis It is very difficult, it is perhaps impossible, for someone who loves his mother to love the woman whom your father left her for. Martin Amis mother impossible father Saul Bellow says, funny enough, what French think of your work is tremendously important. And it is. It's more than what the Italians, the Spanish, and the Germans think. Somehow it's still got that cultural primacy. I feel that too: to get praised in France is better than to get praised anywhere else. Martin Amis important enough thinking In Germany, they were very interested in talking about their past. I respect that, and I think they've done quite well. It's become a kind of obsession, as it bloody well should, when compared, for example, to France, which hasn't done anything. France has done no work about their part in transporting eighty thousand people to their deaths. They are still the guy in the leather jacket with the onion, who's a part of La Résistance. In fact, they collaborated, not resisted. Martin Amis people past thinking My father once said there's a correlation between a nation's cuisine and its people: England, nice people, nasty food; France, nice food, nasty people; Spain, nice people, nasty food; Italy, nice people, nice food; and Germany, nasty food, nasty people. And I've always thought that there must be something terribly wrong with the German character - and that there is, really. Martin Amis nice character father It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that the world is there to be celebrated by writers, and in fact this is what all the good ones do, and that the great fashion for gloom and grimness was in fact a false path that certain writers took, I think in response to the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. Martin Amis fashion half thinking The Uruguayans have a sort of purity. I don't know where they got it, and I doubt even if they know from where they got it. Perhaps they didn't kill off their major population. Martin Amis purity doubt Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to me like a good evocation of writer's block. Martin Amis block sound writing All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside, as we gently say. Martin Amis pieces fiction Richard's bookshelves weren't alphabetized. He never had time to alphabetize them. He was always too busy- looking for books he couldn't find. Martin Amis too-busy busy book We all have names we don't know about. Martin Amis names knows It was the tiredness of time lived, with its days and days. It was the tiredness of gravity- gravity, which wants you down in the center of the earth. Martin Amis gravity earth want When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of my memories. She is off to one side, always off to one side, with a book, with a scheme or a project or an enterprise. Martin Amis cousin memories book While making love, we often talk about money. I like it. I like that dirty talk Martin Amis dirty-talk making-love dirty When I hear about some sensational new writer I sort of think, Shut up ... you've got to be around for a long time before you can really say you're a writer. You've got to stand the test of time, which is the only real test there is. Martin Amis real long thinking I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel. Martin Amis awards first-time firsts He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness. Martin Amis consciousness terrible states He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged. Martin Amis please reader want I don't think I've ever been particularly scared of death - but scared of dying, the process. It doesn't seem to be a good way of doing it. Martin Amis dying way thinking All the things we value in society don't mean much in fiction. Martin Amis values mean fiction 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. Martin Amis self country america
