Quotessence
Home / Authors / Martin Amis
Martin Amis

Martin Amis Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingWritingWayIfsPeopleNovelKnowsWantFeelsFictionHumansMenSeemsWorldAmericaFatherLooksAgeFacesSometimes

Famous Martin Amis Quotes

“It's interesting when you're doing signing sessions with other writers and you look at the queues at each table and you can see definite human types gathering there.... My queue is always full of, you know, wild-eyed sleazebags and people who stare at me very intensely, as if I have some particular message for them. As if I must know that they've been reading me, that this dyad or symbiosis of reader and writer has been so intense that I must somehow know about it.”

PeopleIfsKnowsHumansLooksHas BeensReadingInterestingParticularTypeReaderMessagesTablesIntenseStaringDefiniteGatheringSessionSigningQueuesSymbiosis
Author:Martin Amis
Create image

“Amis is acutely, vibrantly sensitive to the different registers of laughter. He knows that it can be the most affirming and uniquely human sound, and also the most sinister and animalistic one. He understands every note of every octave that separates the liberating shout of mirth from the cackle of a bully or the snigger of a sadist.”

KnowsHumansBookDifferentLanguageSoundLaughterNotesSensitiveBullyLiberatingRegisterSinisterMirthAffirmingAnimalistic
Author:Martin Amis
Create image

“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.”

IfsThinkingHumansLongSaidFormUsedPleasureClassStudySpecialSubjectsShapesProjectsDevilOkayAgreeSuicideUsed To BeMessGentlemanSatanLong AgoInwardBangsShamefulInfantile
Author:Martin Amis
Create image

“when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.”

IfsHumansHardMomentsEyeFilmMillionsAirSkyTearsElementsConceptsRainDenialLiftsColourClimbingDirtGreyGritSinkingImpurityHuman EyesPaisley
Book:Money
Create image