Kingsley Amis Quotes

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

As far back as she could remember, she had gone in for day-dreams about what clothes, jewellery and the like she would wear if, like her admired and adored Marie Antoinette, she were somehow to find herself facing public execution.

I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone […], only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.[…] Two's company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one's a crowd.

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

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

As soon as originality became important, the days of artistic merit or excellence were numbered.

More will mean worse.

That stuff you read didn't condition you, you chose it because it was what you wanted to hear.

Be glad you're fifty — and
That you got there while things were nice,
In a world worth looking at twice.
So here's wishing you many more years,
But not all that many. Cheers!

It’s quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I…We used to laugh at Malcolm’s dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programs in Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of.

'What's that stuff they put in ships to keep them from going all over the place?'
'What? Oh … ballast?'
'That's right. People's sex drives are like ballast, they keep them steady. It sounds wrong, but they do.'

Then, because it was every cinematic doctor's exit line, the doctor added, "I'll see myself out."

Shitty things are always simple. Same as great things. Patrick Standish, in conversation.

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.

From an outsider's point of view, a naked woman out of doors is either a sun-worshipper or a rape victim; a man in the same state is either a sexual criminal or a plain lunatic.