Kingsley Amis Quotes - Page 3

I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.

A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation's love of detail and organization.

Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.

Outside every fat man there is an even fatter man trying to close in.

I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.

I sometimes feel that more lousy dishes are presented under the banner of pate than any other.

Cats are only human, they have their faults.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.

Wives and such are constantly filling up any refrigerator they have a claim on, even its ice-compartment, with irrelevant rubbish like food.

Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;Girls aren't like that.

With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.

A blonde girl wearing a man's shirt but in all other visible respects unmanly to the point of outright effeminacy.

Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap.

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me will be destroyed unread. You must make your way yourself. Why you should be so set on the nearly always disappointing profession is a puzzling question.

I was never an Angry Young Man. I am angry only when I hit my thumb with a hammer.

It's never pleasant to have one's unquestioning beliefs put in their historical context, as I know from experience, I can assure you.

Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.

I wish I could have a little tape-and-loudspeaker arrangement sewn into the binding of this magazine, to be triggered off by the light reflected from the reader's eyes on to this part of the page, and set to bawl out at several bels: MORE WILL MEAN WORSE.

The human race has not devised any way of dissolving barriers, getting to know the other chap fast, breaking the ice, that is one-tenth as handy and efficient as letting you and the other chap, or chaps, cease to be totally sober at about the same rate in agreeable surroundings.

He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.

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.

It scored right away with me by being the smooth, fine-grained sort, not the coarse flaky, dry-on-the-outside rubbish full of chunds of gut and gristle to testify to its authenticity.