The only writer who gives me unfeigned pleasure is P.G. Wodehouse. And even him I find a bit heavy. He takes a lot out of me. Scratching my hair, with soft whistles, with lips aquiver, I frown over Sunset at Blandings. Martin Amis More Quotes by Martin Amis More Quotes From Martin Amis Oh man sometimes I wake up feel like a cat runover. Are you familiar with the stoical aspects of hard drinking, of heavy drinking? Oh it's heavy. Oh it's hard. It isn't easy. Jesus, I never meant me any harm. All I wanted was a good time. Martin Amis cat drinking jesus Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands. Martin Amis belief reality Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual. Martin Amis medieval islam christianity Mere fact has no chance of being formally perfect. It will get in the way, it will be all elbows. Martin Amis elbows perfect way I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write. Martin Amis register i-can writing 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 assuming life-is writing In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong. Martin Amis aggressors fighting 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 age faces men 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 bully laughter book One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back. Martin Amis selfishness father children Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour. Martin Amis curves novelists careers 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 legacy historical adventure I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves. Martin Amis retreat genius thinking 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 russia determination ideas 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 feelings people looks 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-you character children So I am lonely, but not alone, like everybody else. Martin Amis i-am-lonely not-alone lonely Never content just to be, America is also obliged to mean; America signifies, hence its constant and riveting vulnerability to illusion. Martin Amis illusion mean america 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 profound people moving 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 paper writing character
