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Martin Amis QUOTES

Martin Amis QUOTES

1 " Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black. "

― Martin Amis , The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11

2 " And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit. "

― Martin Amis , London Fields

3 " The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life. "

― Martin Amis

4 " It is straightforward—and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion. "

― Martin Amis , The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11

5 " My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived. "

― Martin Amis , Experience: A Memoir

6 " Religious belief is without reason and without dignity, and its record is near-universally dreadful. "

― Martin Amis , The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11

7 " Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I'm too afraid to and have to eat it anyway. "

― Martin Amis , Other People

8 " He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed. "

― Martin Amis , The Information

9 " Impartially, shrewdly, I considered suicide, though not in my worst moments. The bottle of pills. The note: 'No hard feelings, everyone, but I've thought about it and it's just not on, is it? It's nearly on, but not quite. No? Anyway, all the best, C. "

― Martin Amis , The Rachel Papers

10 " Why couldn't Rachel be a little more specific about the type of person she was? Goodness knew; if she were a hippie I'd talk to her about her drug experiences, the zodiac, tarot cards. If she were left-wing I'd look miserable, hate Greece, and eat baked beans straight from the tin. If she were the sporty type I'd play her at... chess and backgammon and things. "

― Martin Amis , The Rachel Papers

11 " The deal with multiculturalism is that the only culture you're allowed to disapprove of is your own. "

― Martin Amis

12 " Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn. "

― Martin Amis

13 " I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bare to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now there's nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people won't see any reason not to do you harm. "

― Martin Amis

14 " How astonishingly intimate the business of fiction is, more intimate than anything that issues from the psychiatrist’s couch or even the lovers’ bed. You see the soul, pinned and wriggling on the wall. "

― Martin Amis

15 " …This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events, only experience will answer. "

― Martin Amis , Experience: A Memoir

16 " Marriage is always something of a compromise, as I'm sure you're now aware. Any long-term relationship is - and one does have to see it in the long term, Charles. No, I expect your mother and myself will never divorce. It's uneconomic and, at my age, usually unnecessary. "

― Martin Amis , The Rachel Papers

17 " Only parents and torturers and the janitors of holocausts are asked to stand the sound of so much human grief. "

― Martin Amis , London Fields

18 " When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable "

― Martin Amis , Other People

19 " It used to be said, not so long ago, that every suicide gave Satan special pleasure. I don't think that's true—unless it isn't true either that the Devil is a gentleman. If the Devil has no class at all, then okay, I agree: He gets a bang out of suicide. Because suicide is a mess. As a subject for study, suicide is perhaps uniquely incoherent. And the act itself is without shape and without form. The human project implodes, contorts inward—shameful, infantile, writhing, gesturing. It's a mess in there. "

― Martin Amis , Night Train

20 " Suicide is the night train, speeding your way to darkness. "

― Martin Amis , Night Train