Quotes by Kingsley Amis

About Kingsley Amis:

Sir Kingsley William Amis is the father of British novelist Martin Amis.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Then, Patrick, you do feel it too? You do feel ... something? It would be so bleak if you felt nothing. That's what scares women, you know.' 'I do know, and you needn't be scared. I feel something all right.' 'Promise me you'll always treat me as a p...

Kingsley Amis

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

Kingsley Amis

I thought to myself how much more welcome a faculty the imagination would be if we could tell when it was at work and when not.

Kingsley Amis

I am too old a hand to be put off pleasure by even the certain prospect of not enjoying it.

Kingsley Amis

There are other things to a woman than taking her to bed.

Kingsley Amis

Lyall felt he could not say which of two things was harder to put up with, the Abbot's conversational style, with its bland coherence and assumption of severely limited cogitative powers in the hearer, or his recurrent look of pleased surprise as eac...

Kingsley Amis

America takes her writers too seriously.

Kingsley Amis

To refer even in passing to unpublished or struggling authors and their problems is to put oneself at some risk, so I will say here and now that any unsolicited manuscripts or typescripts sent to me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 yo...

Kingsley Amis

Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served t...

Kingsley Amis

When the bishop farted we were amused to hear about it. Should the ploughboy find treasure we must be told. But when the ploughboy farts... er... keep it to yourself.

Kingsley Amis

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

Kingsley Amis

Dixon was alive again. Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way; not for him the slow, gracious wandering from the halls of sleep, but a summary, forcible ejection. He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spi...

Kingsley Amis

... all his faces were designed to express rage or loathing. Now that something had happened which really deserved a face, he had none to celebrate it with. As a kind of token, he made his Sex Life in Ancient Rome face.

Kingsley Amis

Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

Kingsley Amis

If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.

Kingsley Amis

He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.

Kingsley Amis

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

Kingsley Amis

If you can't annoy somebody, there's little point in writing.

Kingsley Amis

His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

Kingsley Amis

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

Kingsley Amis

Author Bio

  • NameKingsley Amis
  • DescriptionEnglish novelist, poet, critic, teacher
  • AliasesSir Kingsley William Amis
  • BornApril 16, 1922
  • DiedOctober 22, 1995
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionScience Fiction Writer; Poet; Short Story Writer; Novelist; Literary Critic; Writer
  • AwardsCommander Of The Order Of The British Empire; Cholmondeley Award