Quotes by Martin Amis

Why couldnt Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie Id talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing Id look miserable, hate Greece, and eat baked beans straight from the tin. If she were the sporty type Id play her at... chess and backgammon and things.

The deal with multiculturalism is that the only culture youre allowed to disapprove of is your own.

Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.

I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bare to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now theres nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people wont see any reason not to do you harm.

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from the psychiatrist’s couch or even the lovers’ bed. You see the soul, pinned and wriggling on the wall.

…This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events, only experience will answer.

Marriage is always something of a compromise, as Im sure youre now aware. Any long-term relationship is - and one does have to see it in the long term, Charles. No, I expect your mother and myself will never divorce. Its uneconomic and, at my age, usually unnecessary.

Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief.

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I dont think thats true—unless it isnt true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward—shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. Its a mess in there.

Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness.

You never can tell, though, with suicide notes, can you? In the planetary aggregate of all life, there are many more suicide notes than there are suicides. Theyre like poems in that respect, suicide notes: nearly everyone tries their hand at them some time, with or without the talent. We all write them in our heads. Usually the note is the thing. You complete it, and then resume your time travel. It is the note and not the life that is cancelled out. Or the other way round. Or death. You never can tell, though, can you, with suicide notes.

Poverty said the same thing, century after century, but in different kinds of sentences.

Once upon a time there was a king, and the king commissioned his favorite wizard to create a magic mirror. This mirror didn’t show you your reflection. It showed you your soul—it showed you who you really were.The wizard couldn’t look at it without turning away. The king couldn’t look at it. The courtiers couldn’t look at it. A chestful of treasure was offered to anyone who could look at it for sixty seconds without turning away. And no one could.

Now I have to lie on the bed for a few minutes and let the solitude gather round me once more.

Whereas I would argue that style is morality: morality detailed, configured, intensified. It’s not in the mere narrative arrangement of good and bad that morality makes itself felt. It can be there in every sentence

It’s possible to be flippant here, when Jihadists fly aircraft into buildings they shout God is Great, what do atheists shout when they do it?

He thought, Yeah. Yeah, non-smokers live seven years longer. Which seven will be subtracted by the god called Time? It wont be that convulsive, heart-bursting spell between twenty-eight and thirty-five. No. Itll be that really cool bit between eighty-six and ninety-three.

The trouble with life (the novelist will feel) is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning, and the same ending.