Kingsley Amis famous quotes

The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Requirements #Firsts #Degrees

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Writing #Littles #Annoying

Only a world without love strikes me as instantly and decisively more terrible than one without music.
-- Kingsley Amis

#World #Strikes #Terrible

When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a s**t you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is and there is no use crying over spilt milk.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Jobs #Hangover #Sadness

Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Party #Mean #Political

The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Knowing #May #Rewards

Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Way #Consciousness

A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Lunch #Breakfast #May

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

#Catholic #Religion #Church

Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Love #Sex #Letting You Go

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

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Sometimes #Dishes #Banner

Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Nice #Nasty #Nice Things

The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Disappointment #Real #Loss

We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it
-- Kingsley Amis

#Orbit #Demand #Enough

If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.
-- Kingsley Amis

#War #Gone #Youth

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

#Mean #Eye #Light

I don't say that the drunk man is the real man, and the sober man merely a shell. But you find out something different about people when they're drunk. Of course, you sometimes find that they're not different at all--that you merely get more of the same, perhaps said rather more loudly and incoherently, but basically the same.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Real #Men #People

Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Common Sense #Motto #Peril

Sex stops when you pull up your pants, Love never lets you go.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Love #Sex #Pull Ups

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.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Feelings #Chaps

It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Historical #Belief #Historical Context

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

Those who professed themselves unable to believe in the reality of human progress ought to cheer themselves up, as the students under examination had conceivably been cheered up, by a short study of the Middle Ages. The hydrogen bomb, the South African Government, Chioang Kaidick, Senator McCarthy himself, would then seem a light price to pay for no longer being in the Middle Ages.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Cheer #Believe #Reality

The human race has not devised any way of dissolving barriers, getting to know the other chap fast, breaking the ice, that is one-tenth as handy and efficient as letting you and the other chap, or chaps, cease to be totally sober at about the same rate in agreeable surroundings.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Race #Ice #Way

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

#Comedian #Hats #Letdowns

Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Women #Men #Wonder

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

#Women #Fiction #Theme

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

#Pigs #Roots #Want

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Atheist #Hate #Wells

A blonde girl wearing a man's shirt but in all other visible respects unmanly to the point of outright effeminacy.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Girl #Men #Blonde

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 #Firsts

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

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

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 #Law

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

#Knowing #Doctors #People

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Training #Needed #Wanted

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

#Inspirational #Children #Kids

Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Laziness #Journalism #Incompetence

Cats are only human, they have their faults.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Cat #Faults #Humans

Outside every fat man there is an even fatter man trying to close in.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Men #Trying #Fats

It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Use #Natural #Ends

Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Use #Authenticity #Drink

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

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Wine #Organization #Details

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

#Animal #Looks #Behaviour

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Wine #Labels #Too Short

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunds of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Dry #Rubbish #Authenticity

[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

#Winning #Technology #Class

He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Believe #Hangover

Be glad you're fifty - andThat you got there while things were nice,In a world worth looking at twice.So here's wishing you many more years,But not all that many. Cheers!
-- Kingsley Amis

#Cheer #Nice #Years

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

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.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Struggle #Risk #Way

The Scandinavians are dear people but they've never been what you might call bywords for wit and sparkle, have they?
-- Kingsley Amis

#People #Might #Sparkle

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

#Thinking #Fiction #Use

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

#Writing #Mean #Years

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;Girls aren't like that.
-- Kingsley Amis

#Girl #Love Is #Men