Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amisis a British novelist. His best-known novels are Moneyand London Fields. He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice to date. Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 August 1949
faces fierce ancient
Every day, the dispensing of existence.... Its face is fierce and distant and ancient.
priorities nuclear target
What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves.
principles kind pleasure
When I talk about the pleasure principle, I don't say there is only one kind of pleasure, there are many kinds of pleasure. Some pleasure is difficult. It should be for the reader as well as the writer. But it has to be pleasure.
typewriters new-life acquire
When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.
might
Love might have expanded her. But we are not all of us going to get loved. We are not all of us going to get expanded.
consciousness states terrible
He was in a terrible state- that of consciousness.
sunset hair giving
The only writer who gives me unfeigned pleasure is P.G. Wodehouse. And even him I find a bit heavy. He takes a lot out of me. Scratching my hair, with soft whistles, with lips aquiver, I frown over Sunset at Blandings.
curves careers usual
Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.
belief nonsense written
My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.
walks soulful
Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.
sexy dream writing
Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites. Good sex is impossible to write about. Lawrence and Updike have given it their all, and the result is still uneasy and unsure. It may be that good sex is something fiction just can't do - like dreams. Most of the sex in my novels is absolutely disastrous. Sex can be funny, but not very sexy.
interviews
The literary interview won't tell you what a writer is like. Far more compellingly to some, it will tell you what a writer is like to interview.
fiction pieces
All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside, as we gently say.
humor common-sense serious
Let me assure you that the humourless as a bunch don't just not know what's funny, they don't know what's serious. They have no common sense, either, and shouldn't be trusted with anything.