Kingsley Amis Quotes
-
'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.
-
Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap.
-
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.
-
The Scandinavians are dear people but they've never been what you might call bywords for wit and sparkle, have they?
-
More will mean worse.
-
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.
-
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
-
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.
-
When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.
-
To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.
-
Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.
-
It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.
-
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
-
I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Cats are only human, they have their faults.
-
It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Women don't seem to think it's good enough; They write about it.
-
He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.
-
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
-
His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.