Kingsley Amis Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Hangover cure: Rigorous sex, hydration, hot bath, then "go up for half an hour in an open aeroplane. (needless to say, with a non-hungover person at the controls)."

  Kingsley Amis

  Sex, Hangover, Hydration

  9 Copy quote

• Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what's more you want to go on fitting it.

  Kingsley Amis

  Attitude, Love You, Ignorance

  Kingsley Amis (1992). “Lucky Jim”, Penguin Classics

  4 Copy quote

• [Science fiction is] that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesised on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility.

  Kingsley Amis

  Technology, Winning, Class

  4 Copy quote

• Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free.

  Kingsley Amis

  Death, Bed, Said

  4 Copy quote

• Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.

  Kingsley Amis

  Common Sense, Motto, Peril

  Kingsley Amis (2011). “Stanley And The Women”, p.226, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.

  Kingsley Amis

  Comedian, Hats, Letdowns

  6 Copy quote

• The world that seemed so various and new, well, it does contract. One's burning desire to investigate human behavior, and to make, or imply, statements about it, does fall off. And so one does find that early works are full of energy and also full of vulgarity, crudity, and incompetence, and later works are more carefully finished, and in that sense better literary products. But . . . there's often a freshness that is missing in later works--for every gain there's a loss. I think it evens out in that way.

  Kingsley Amis

  Fall, Loss, Thinking

  13 Copy quote

• I'll pour you the first one and after that, if you don't have one, it's your own f****** fault. You know where it is.

  Kingsley Amis

  Firsts, Faults, Knows

  Kingsley Amis (2010). “Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis”, p.11, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  15 Copy quote

• You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescense, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.

  Kingsley Amis

  Sex, Cutting, Maturity

  6 Copy quote

• It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.

  Kingsley Amis

  Inspirational, Life, Children

  9 Copy quote

• I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.

  Kingsley Amis

  Food, Roots, Pigs

  7 Copy quote

• How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.

  Kingsley Amis

  Doctors, Knowing, People

  Kingsley Amis (1958). “Lucky Jim: A Novel”, Queens House, Incorporated

  7 Copy quote

• One of the great benefits of organised religion is that you can be forgiven your sins, which must be a wonderful thing. I mean, I carry my sins around with me, there's nobody there to forgive them.

  Kingsley Amis

  Mean, Forgiving, Benefits

  9 Copy quote

• Twentieth century music is like paedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.

  Kingsley Amis

  Champion, Matter, Causes

  Kingsley Amis (1990). “The Amis collection: selected non-fiction, 1954-1990”, Arrow

  4 Copy quote

• Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work.

  Kingsley Amis

  Play, May, Drink

  Kingsley Amis (1991). “Memoirs”, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

• I've been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first fifteen years didn't produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems--very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That's a point in one's favor.

  Kingsley Amis

  Mean, Writing, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.

  Kingsley Amis

  Nice, Nasty, Nice Things

  Kingsley Amis (2012). “Lucky Jim”, New York Review of Books

  9 Copy quote

• Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.

  Kingsley Amis

  Self, Criticism, Employment

  18 Copy quote

• Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.

  Kingsley Amis

  Reputation, Now And Then, Conscious

  Kingsley Amis (1991). “Memoirs”, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don't respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.

  Kingsley Amis

  Strong, Writing, Wine

  "Toast of the town" by Jay McInerney, www.theguardian.com. October 20, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

• Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.

  Kingsley Amis

  Art, Thinking, Elements

  5 Copy quote

• He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

  Kingsley Amis

  Funny, Faith, Humorous

  One Fat Englishman (1963) ch. 8

  10 Copy quote

• Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.

  Kingsley Amis

  Art, Philosophy, Light

  Kingsley Amis (1978). “Jake's Thing”, Hutchinson Radius

  5 Copy quote

• It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.

  Kingsley Amis

  Women, Fiction, Theme

  Kingsley Amis (2011). “The King's English”, p.299, Penguin UK

  5 Copy quote

• I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.

  Kingsley Amis

  Book, Taken, Writing

  4 Copy quote

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