As I've already mentioned, <i>1984</i> and I were getting on famously. A no-frills setup, run without sentiment, snobbery or cultural favouritism, Ai… - Martin Amis

Money doesn't mind if we say it's evil, it goes from strength to strength. It's a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.

What happened on September 11? On September 11 — what happened? Picture this: two upended matchboxes, knocked over by the sheer force of paper-darts. Only it was much, much worse than that. In fact, words alone cannot adduce how much worse it was than that. September 11 was an attack on words: we felt a general deficit. And with words destroyed, we had to make do, we had to bolster truth with colons and repetition: not only repetition: but repetition and: colons. This is what we adduce.

We bring Kingsley comfort, by being here, but only one visitor has brought him any pleasure: Jaime. He enjoyed, he exulted in Jaime – because the dew is yet on him, the glamour is yet on him. Jaime brought his youth, in all its Conradian force (youth, that ‘mighty power’). I haven’t got any youth to offer my father. This year has closed my youth. I’m sorry, Dad: I haven’t got any . . . Sometimes I imagine that the dead are allowed to watch their children. This would be one of their privileges. But there must come a point where the dead really wouldn’t want to look. William Amis, even Rosa Amis: they wouldn’t be watching now.