Quotes from Martin Amis

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the mind of the author.

Novelists tend to go off at 70, and I'm in a funk about it, I've got myself into a real paranoid funk about it, how the talent dies before the body.

My literary career kicked off in 1956 when, as a resident of Swansea, South Wales, I published my first novel, 'Lucky Jim.'

It used to be said that by a certain age a man had the face that he deserved. Nowadays, he has the face he can afford.

On any longer view, man is only fitfully committed to the rational -- to thinking, seeing, learning, knowing. Believing is what he's really proud of.

They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.

There's a lot of anti-intellectualism in Britain. And the writer's views on this or that are really of less importance, as they see it, than that of the man in the street.

Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.

Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.

While making love, we often talk about money. I like it. I like that dirty talk

Kingsley Amis was a lenient father. His paternal style, in the early years, can best be described as amiably minimalist - in other words, my mother did it all.

Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.

I don't think I've ever been particularly scared of death - but scared of dying, the process. It doesn't seem to be a good way of doing it.

It's good fun to create an unpredictable character. When he comes into the room, I don't know what he's going to do - I have to find my way.

Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.

The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.

America has had much more respect for its writers because they had to define what America was. America wasn't sure what it was.

If every inhabitant of a liberal democracy believes in liberal democracy, then it doesn't matter what creed or colour they are.

All the things we value in society don't mean much in fiction.

Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual.

Style isn't something added on; it's intrinsic to the perceptions and the way you see life.

All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.

Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, 'Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.'

When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak.