Martin Amis Quotes & Sayings

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

“Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time.”

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

“Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, 'Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.'”

“Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.”

“Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.”

“If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.”

“Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.”

“The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.”

“When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of my memories. She is off to one side, always off to one side, with a book, with a scheme or a project or an enterprise.”