Martin Amis Quotes

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• My theory is - we don’t really go that far into other people, even when we think we do. We hardly ever go in and bring them out. We just stand at the jaws of the cave, and strike a match, and ask quickly if anybody’s there.

  Martin Amis

  Thinking, People, Caves

  1984 Money.

  9 Copy quote

• Tremendous interest in the superficial is very characteristic of cultures in decline.

  Martin Amis

  Culture, Superficial, Characteristics

  15 Copy quote

• One of the unseen benefits of having children is that they deliver you from your own selfishness. There's no going back.

  Martin Amis

  Children, Father, Selfishness

  4 Copy quote

• When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

  Martin Amis

  Past, Forgotten, Unforgettable

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Nov 30, 2012

  39 Copy quote

• People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there. Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking the other way.

  Martin Amis

  Jobs, People, Giving

  54 Copy quote

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

  Martin Amis

  Addiction, Culture, Twins

  Martin Amis (2014). “The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000”, p.43, Vintage

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• People are always talking on their phones, or looking at their phones, because they don't want to be alone with their thoughts.

  Martin Amis

  Phones, Talking, People

  Source: www.vulture.com

  15 Copy quote

• Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.

  Martin Amis

  Style, Fixed, Cruelty

  Martin Amis (1991). “Time's arrow, or, The nature of the offence”, Vintage

  53 Copy quote

• Your heart becomes gangrenous in your body when you go against your talent.

  Martin Amis

  Heart, Body, Talent

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• The future could go this way, that way. The future's futures have never looked so rocky. Don't put money on it. Take my advice and stick to the present. It's the real stuff, the only stuff, it's all there is, the present, the panting present.

  Martin Amis

  Real, Advice, Stuff

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Jun 24, 2013

  4 Copy quote

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

  Martin Amis

  Weapons, Enough, Arms Race

  "Einstein's Monsters". Book by Martin Amis, April 30, 1987.

  14 Copy quote

• Like fundamentalist Judaism and medieval Christianity, Islam is totalist. That is to say, it makes a total claim on the individual.

  Martin Amis

  Islam, Christianity, Medieval

  "The age of horrorism (part three)" by Martin Amis, www.theguardian.com. September 10, 2006.

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• Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

  Martin Amis

  Fiction, Way

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• Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.

  Martin Amis

  Envy, Balls, Moral

  13 Copy quote

• These are the Seven Deadly Sins: Avarice, Envy, Pride, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Sloth. These are the seven deadly sins: venality, paranoia, insecurity, excess, carnality, contempt, boredom.

  Martin Amis

  Pride, Envy, Boredom

  Martin Amis (1981). “Other people: a mystery story”, Jonathan Cape

  23 Copy quote

• Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.

  Martin Amis

  Dream, Sleep, Night

  Martin Amis (2010). “The Information”, p.9, Random House

  39 Copy quote

• To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés of the heart.

  Martin Amis

  Writing, Heart, Mind

  Martin Amis (2014). “The War Against Cliche: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000”, p.15, Vintage

  12 Copy quote

• Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

  Martin Amis

  Book, Years, Different

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• Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.

  Martin Amis

  Venus, Littles, Closure

  31 Copy quote

• My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

  Martin Amis

  Paper, Facts

  45 Copy quote

• What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.

  Martin Amis

  Perseverance, Wife, Style

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Aug 10, 2016

  19 Copy quote

• Addictions do come in handy sometimes: at least you have to get out of bed for them.

  Martin Amis

  Addiction, Bed, Sometimes

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• More will mean worse.

  Martin Amis

  Mean, Conflict

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• It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay.

  Martin Amis

  Wall, Thinking, Glasses

  "Time's Arrow". Book by Martin Amis, www.avclub.com. September 1991.

  46 Copy quote

• The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.

  Martin Amis

  Light, Years, Inches

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