Kingsley Amis Quotes

While he was climbing the litter-strewn steps his left ball gave a sharp twinge, on and off like a light-switch, then again after he had sat down. Nothing. Just one of the aches and pains that come and go. No significance.

[B]eing a writer is much more important to the person, to the writer, than being anything else is to the person being it.[…] More than being a painter is to the painter or being a composer of music is to the composer, more than being anything else except maybe being a priest.

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

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

Internally, in itself, madness is an artistic desert. Nothing of any general interest can be said about it. Like sex. But the effects it has on the world outside it can be very interesting indeed. It has no other valid literary use.

People who sound insincere all the time […] should not expect others to notice the difference when they try to sound insincere.

[I]t's human to choose any sort of path into the future rather than face the long road back to what you've left behind.

Friendship includes charity. But there's no charity in sex.

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

Nobody, however learned, however wise, can stand in the way of regress.

Jimmie had said more than once that the upper class enjoyed the true freedom of not caring what anybody else thought about them. Like children perhaps. If that had a bearing, there might be a connection with the boyishness of such people noted by some outside observers, including Indians under the British Raj and later.

If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the War, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.

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.

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.

Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what's more you want to go on fitting it.