Kingsley Amis Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

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

  Kingsley Amis

  Inspirational, Life, Children

  9 Copy quote

• [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

  Technology, Winning, Class

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Light

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

  5 Copy quote

• Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.

  Kingsley Amis

  Instruction, Worthy, One Thing

  4 Copy quote

• 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

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

  8 Copy quote

• More always means worse.

  Kingsley Amis

  Mean

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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, Employment

  18 Copy quote

• Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.

  Kingsley Amis

  Cat, Over You, Way

  1960 Take A Girl Like You, ch.5.

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Food, Roots, Pigs

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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, Knows

  Kingsley Amis (2010). “Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis”, p.11, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Kingsley Amis

  Attitude, Love You, Ignorance

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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Hangover, Hydration

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Cutting, Maturity

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Doctors, Knowing, People

  Kingsley Amis (1958). “Lucky Jim: A Novel”, Queens House, Incorporated

  7 Copy quote

• Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.

  Kingsley Amis

  Common Sense, Motto, Peril

  Kingsley Amis (2011). “Stanley And The Women”, p.226, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work.

  Kingsley Amis

  Play, May, Drink

  Kingsley Amis (1991). “Memoirs”, Vintage

  15 Copy quote

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

  Kingsley Amis

  Comedian, Hats, Letdowns

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Mean, Writing, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.

  Kingsley Amis

  Reputation, Now And Then, Conscious

  Kingsley Amis (1991). “Memoirs”, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Kingsley Amis

  Champion, Matter, Causes

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

  4 Copy quote

• Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.

  Kingsley Amis

  Nice, Nasty, Nice Things

  Kingsley Amis (2012). “Lucky Jim”, New York Review of Books

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  "Toast of the town" by Jay McInerney, www.theguardian.com. October 20, 2006.

  9 Copy quote

• Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.

  Kingsley Amis

  Art, Thinking, Elements

  5 Copy quote

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