Kingsley Amis Quotes

[W]hat's the point of growing a beard if you're not going to be a little bit free and easy?

There isn't another other sex.

A great British prime minister once remarked that the people were divided into two nations, the rich and the poor, and in effect that these had no knowledge of each other. One might say the same, perhaps, of those who live in parts of the world where segregation by races is practised. But these barriers, or the reasons for them, belong to a part of our history which is fortunately passing away. There is one barrier, however, which no amount of progress or tolerance or legislation can ever diminish. I'm talking about the barrier between the attractive and the unattractive.

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!

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.

You can't screw the rich, something in Ronnie muttered as Miss Quick got off him with quite as much alacrity as she had got on him. You have to let them screw you. Or else you leave out screwing altogether.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
Girls aren't like that.

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

Should you revisit us
Stay a little longer
And get to know the place...
On local life we trust
The resident witness
Not the royal tourist.

'Oh, I see,' said Jenny. 'But you're just getting these men [New Age gurus] to help you all feel better. I thought when you talked about helping people you meant other people. You know, like the blind.'
'Isn't everybody blind, in one way or another?' asked Wendy.

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

'You're still the same girl. What people do doesn't change their nature.'
She shook her head.[…] 'What they do is their nature,' she said.

'Do you think that's altogether fair to him, to Jimmie, that is? I realize you've known him longer than I have.'
'Maybe, maybe not. You know, darling, I think you're sometimes a bit carried away by fairness.'

He was short on the one attribute certain to meet the immediate respect of the rich — i.e. being rich — and must therefore obtrude deterrents against being buggered about.

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.