Quotes by Kingsley Amis
There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.
Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.
I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.
Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.
A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night and then as its mausoleum.
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.
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.
It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse, flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunks of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.
It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start their life as children.
No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
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. Its very nobility makes the results of its breakdown doubly horrifying, and it breaks down, as it always will, not by some external agency but because it cannot work.
It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.
