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Should you revisit usStay a little longerAnd get to know the place...On local life we trustThe resident witnessNot the royal tourist.
Kingsley Amis -
Sex stops when you pull up your pants, Love never lets you go.
Kingsley Amis
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Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.
Kingsley Amis -
Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.
Kingsley Amis -
There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Kingsley Amis -
Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice-compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food.
Kingsley Amis -
Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
Kingsley Amis -
With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.
Kingsley Amis
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Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European ...
Kingsley Amis -
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 -
[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 -
Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
Kingsley Amis -
I enjoy talking to you more than anybody else because I never feel I am giving myself away and so can admit to shady, dishonest, crawling, cowardly, unjust, arrogant, snobbish, lecherous, perverted and generally shameful feelings that I don't want anybody else to know about; but most of all because I am always on the verge of violent laughter when talking to you.If you were here, I keep thinking, we would spend the time in talk and drink and smoke and I should be laughing a lot of the time, and I should be enjoying myself a lot of the time.
Kingsley Amis -
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
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He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
Kingsley Amis -
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start their life as children.
Kingsley Amis -
I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.
Kingsley Amis -
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 -
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
Kingsley Amis -
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
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Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Kingsley Amis -
I wish I could have a little tape-and-loudspeaker arrangement sewn into the binding of this magazine, to be triggered off by the light reflected from the reader's eyes on to this part of the page, and set to bawl out at several bels: MORE WILL MEAN WORSE.
Kingsley Amis -
'Oh, I see,' said Jenny. 'But you're just getting these men New Age gurus to help you all feel better. I thought when you talked about helping people you meant other people. You know, like the blind.'Isn't everybody blind, in one way or another?' asked Wendy.
Kingsley Amis -
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