Quotes from Kingsley Amis

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.

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.

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

There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.

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.

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

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

Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it.

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

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

With the Gaelic coffee, surmounted by half an inch or so of chilled cream, he felt his survival till breakfast guaranteed.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

They're laughing because they're mad, too mad to be able to tell what's funny any more. The rewards for being sane may not be very many but knowing what's funny is one of them.

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

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.

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.

Death has got something to be said for it:There's no need to get out of bed for it;Wherever you may be,They bring it to you, free.