Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis
Sir Kingsley William Amis, CBEwas an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, along with works of social and literary criticism. According to his biographer, Zachary Leader, Amis was "the finest English comic novelist of the second half of the twentieth century." He is the father of British novelist Martin Amis...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 April 1922
CityLondon, England
Kingsley Amis quotes about
The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.
I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
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
If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.
Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.
Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.
If you are using an adverb, you have got the verb wrong.
Twentieth century music is like paedophilia. No matter how persuasively and persistently its champions urge their cause, it will never be accepted by the public at large, who will continue to regard it with incomprehension, outrage and repugnance.
Hangover cure: Rigorous sex, hydration, hot bath, then "go up for half an hour in an open aeroplane. (needless to say, with a non-hungover person at the controls)."
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.
How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.
Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.