MAMartin Amis

42 collected words

Martin Amis

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.

Martin Amis / quote

02Undated

And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.

Martin Amis / quote

03Undated

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.

Martin Amis / quote

04Undated

It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.

Martin Amis / quote

05Undated

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.

Martin Amis / quote

06Undated

Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful.

Martin Amis / quote

07Undated

Belief is otiose reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.

Martin Amis / quote

08Undated

Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.

Martin Amis / quote

09Undated

He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.

Martin Amis / quote

10Undated

Impartially, shrewdly, I considered suicide, though not in my worst moments. The bottle of pills. The note: 'No hard feelings, everyone, but I've thought about it and it's just not on, is it? It's nearly on, but not quite. No? Anyway, all the best, C.

Martin Amis / quote

11Undated

Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing I'd look miserable, hate Greece, and eat baked beans straight from the tin. If she were the sporty type I'd play her at... chess and backgammon and things.

Martin Amis / quote

12Undated

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

Martin Amis / quote

13Undated

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

Martin Amis / quote

14Undated

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 there's nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people won't see any reason not to do you harm.

Martin Amis / quote

15Undated

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life

Martin Amis / quote

16Undated

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.

Martin Amis / quote

17Undated

…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.

Martin Amis / quote

18Undated

Marriage is always something of a compromise, as I'm sure you're 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. It's uneconomic and, at my age, usually unnecessary.

Martin Amis / quote

19Undated

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

Martin Amis / quote

20Undated

When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable

Martin Amis / quote

21Undated

It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true—unless it isn't 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. It's a mess in there.

Martin Amis / quote

22Undated

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

Martin Amis / quote

23Undated

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. They're 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.

Martin Amis / quote

24Undated

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

Martin Amis / quote