Kingsley Amis Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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

  Degrees, Weight, Requirements

  Kingsley Amis (2010). “Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis”, p.90, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  53 Copy quote

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

  Kingsley Amis

  Knowing, May, Rewards

  1984 Stanley and the Women, ch.2.

  34 Copy quote

• If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

  Kingsley Amis

  Writing, Editing, Littles

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  "Distilled Kingsley: The late, great author - and prodigious drinker - gives his advice on beating a hangover" by Kingsley Amis, www.dailymail.co.uk. December 26, 2008.

  39 Copy quote

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

  Kingsley Amis

  World, Strikes, Terrible

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

  31 Copy quote

• Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.

  Kingsley Amis

  Love, Sex, Letting You Go

  Kingsley Amis (2016). “Collected Poems: 1944-1979”, p.68, New York Review of Books

  24 Copy quote

• If you are using an adverb, you have got the verb wrong.

  Kingsley Amis

  Verbs, Adverbs, Ifs

  29 Copy quote

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

  Kingsley Amis

  Lunch, Breakfast, May

  "Aren't We Due a Royalty Statement?". Book by Giles Gordon, 1993.

  26 Copy quote

• Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.

  Kingsley Amis

  1957 'Socialism and the Intellectuals'.

  9 Copy quote

• Women are really much nicer than men: No wonder we like them.

  Kingsley Amis

  Women, Men, Wonder

  'Something Nasty in the Bookshop'

  16 Copy quote

• Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.

  Kingsley Amis

  Laziness, Journalism, Incompetence

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  13 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

• 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

  Kingsley Amis (1968). “Lucky Jim's politics”

  31 Copy quote

• It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

  Kingsley Amis

  Use, Natural, Ends

  Kingsley Amis (2011). “The King's English”, p.209, Penguin UK

  16 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

• Sex stops when you pull up your pants,
  Love never lets you go.

  Kingsley Amis

  Love, Sex, Pull Ups

  5 Copy quote

• Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.

  Kingsley Amis

  Way, Consciousness

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

  15 Copy quote

• 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, Drunk

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  Ice, Race, Way

  Kingsley Amis (2010). “Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis”, p.4, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  6 Copy quote

• 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

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

  10 Copy quote

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

  Kingsley Amis

  Wine, Labels, Too Short

  10 Copy quote

• When starting to think about any novel, part of the motive is: I'm going to show them, this time.

  Kingsley Amis

  Thinking, Starting, Motive

  5 Copy quote

• 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

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  11 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

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