Martin Amis quotes - page 6

Much more recently I reclassified myself as an agnostic. Atheism, it turns out, is not quite rational either. The sketchiest acquaintance with cosmology will tell you that the universe is not, or is not yet, decipherable by human beings. It will also tell you that the universe is far more bizarre, prodigious and chillingly grand than any doctrine, and that spiritual needs can be met by its contemplation. Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands. (Martin Amis)
Weirdly, the world suddenly feels bipolar. All over again the west confronts an irrationalist, agonistic, theocratic/ideocratic system which is essentially and unappeasably opposed to its existence. View quote
Martin Amis
It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. View quote
Martin Amis
Philip Larkin, a big, fat, bald librarian at the University of Hull, was unquestionably England's unofficial laureate: our best-loved poet since the war. View quote
Martin Amis
The reaction against Larkin has been unprecedentedly violent as well as unprecedentedly hypocritical, tendentious and smug. Its energy does not, could not derive from literature - it derives from ideology, or from the vaguer promptings of a new ethos. View quote
Martin Amis
I gave a school speech in which I rejected all belief as an affront to common sense. I was an atheist, and I was 12: it seemed open-and-shut. View quote
Martin Amis
There are two rules of war that have not yet been invalidated by the new world order. The first rule is that the belligerent nation must be fairly sure that its actions will make things better; the second rule is that the belligerent nation must be more or less certain that its actions won't make things worse. View quote
Martin Amis
Terrorism undermines morality. Then, too, it undermines reason. View quote
Martin Amis
Ten years later, Larkin is now something like a pariah, or an untouchable. View quote
Martin Amis
His indivisibility judges their hedging and trimming. His honesty judges their watchfulness. View quote
Martin Amis
In Andrew Motion's book, we have the constant sense that Larkin is somehow falling short of the cloudless emotional health enjoyed by, for instance, Andrew Motion. (Martin Amis)
Beautifully written... the webs of imagery that Harris has so carefully woven... contains writing of which our best writers would be proud... there is not a singly ugly or dead sentence... View quote
Martin Amis
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. View quote
Martin Amis
Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years. View quote
Martin Amis
Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time. View quote
Martin Amis
No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. View quote
Martin Amis
Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external. View quote
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. View quote
Martin Amis
Language leads a double life - and so does the novelist. You chat with family and friends, you attend to your correspondence, you consult menus and shopping lists, you observe road signs, and so on. Then you enter your study, where language exists in quite another form - as the stuff of patterned artifice. View quote
Martin Amis
Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body. View quote
Martin Amis
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)
My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.' View quote
Martin Amis
I would never write about someone that forced me to write at a lower register than what I can write. View quote
Martin Amis
You cannot combine being a movie star with not being a movie star. View quote
Martin Amis
All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a computer. View quote
Martin Amis