Martin Amis quotes

Martin Amis was a renowned British novelist and essayist, recognized for his sharp wit and innovative style. His works often explored themes of contemporary society, morality, and the human condition. He influenced a generation of writers and remains an icon of modern English literature. Here are 177 of his quotes:

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

Martin Amis

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

Martin Amis

Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.

Martin Amis

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable.

Martin Amis

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

Martin Amis

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

For myself and my loved ones, I want the heat, which comes at the speed of light. I don't want to have to hang about for the blast, which idles along at the speed of sound.

Martin Amis

On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational - to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.

Martin Amis

What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening to use nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.

Martin Amis

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

He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness.

Martin Amis

September 11 was a day of de-Enlightenment. Politics stood revealed as a veritable Walpurgis Night of the irrational. And such old, old stuff. The conflicts we now face or fear involve opposed geographical arenas, but also opposed centuries or even millennia. It is a landscape of ferocious anachronisms: nuclear jihad in the Indian subcontinent; the medieval agonism of Islam; the Bronze Age blunderings of the Middle East.

Martin Amis

Never content just to be, America is also obliged to mean; America signifies, hence its constant and riveting vulnerability to illusion.

Martin Amis

The true manipulator never has a reputation for manipulating.

Martin Amis

The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending ...

Martin Amis

In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong.

Martin Amis

One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled.

Martin Amis

The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves.

Martin Amis

Someone watches over us when we write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.

Martin Amis

Being inoffensive, and being offended, are now the twin addictions of the culture.

Martin Amis

When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.

Martin Amis

Laughter always forgives.

Martin Amis