Quotes from Kingsley Amis

John D. MacDonald is by any standards a better writer than Saul Bellow, only MacDonald writes thrillers and Bellow is a human-heart chap, so guess who wears the top-grade laurels?

He thought to himself now that if ever he went into the brewing business his posters would have written across the top Bowen's Beer, and then underneath that in the middle a picture of Mrs. Knowles driniking a lot of it and falling about, and then across the bottom in bold or salient lettering the words Makes You Drunk.

Het is nooit prettig om je diepste overtuigingen in hun historische context geplaatst te zien worden.

What a pity it was, he thought, that she wasn't better-looking, that she didn't read the articles in the three-halfpenny Press that told you which colour lipstick went with which natural colouring. With twenty per cent more of what she lacked in these ways, she'd never have run into any of her appalling difficulties: the vices and morbidities bred of loneliness would have remained safely dormant until old age.

Shakespeare It is fair, through hardly very important, that to say or imply that the man of this name is not our greatest writer marks a second-rate person at best.

I am too old a hand to be put off pleasure by even the certain prospect of not enjoying it.

even the straightest Of issues looks pretty oblique When a movement turns into a clique...

There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed.

She wore no jewellery, just her wedding ring.

Victor} was no exception to a rule of Alun's that men over fifty who took care of themselves were not to be trusted.

Any man in the company of two woman is outnumbered four to one however amiable they may be. By definition. 'So when its just you and me I outnumber you two to one, is that right?' Affirmative.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the Church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.

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

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

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.

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

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.

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.

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

No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.

It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.

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.

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