Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“…This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I'm not interested in making a diagnostic novel or a concern. I'm 100 percent committed in fiction to the pleasure principle -… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I think a lot of people who read fiction are interested in subtlety. But they wouldn't like my stuff. It's a bit… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Richard's bookshelves weren't alphabetized. He never had time to alphabetize them. He was always too busy- looking for books he couldn't find. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything about it. And it's… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
When I talk about the pleasure principle, I don't say there is only one kind of pleasure, there are many kinds of… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
As someone once said, covers to a novel are like bars to a cage. You can watch the tiger, the Komodo dragon,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Watching an adaptation of your novel can be a violent experience: seeing your old jokes suddenly thrust at you can be alarming.… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“…Here we come close to one of the definitions of literary fiction. Even the best kind of popular novel just comes straight… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
You can't be up the reader's ass, as many a writer I think is - cute as hell, ingratiating as hell. But… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I think it's likely that the civilizing effect of literature has done most of the work, and still continues to do. Look… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“A writer’s life is half ambition and half anxiety, and there has to be both. It is no good writing a novel… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Nuclear weapons could bring about the Book of Revelation in a matter of hours; they could do it today. Of course, no… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Some junk novels were all about airports. Some junk novels were even called things like Airport. Why, then you might ask, was… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites.… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“...I think one shouldn't pussyfoot, and just say that you write the stuff that you would like to read. So you write… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Literature...describes a descent. First, gods. Then demigods. Then epic became tragedy: failed kings, failed heroes. Then the gentry. Then the middle class… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“In the end, it's not your Nobel Prize you're thinking of, it's not your three National Book Awards, and all that. It's… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. And the great satirists, like Swift and Dickens, tend to… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Whatever junk novels were, however they worked, they were close to therapy, and airports were close to therapy. They both belonged to… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Since Henry Miller's Tropic books, of course, it has become difficult to talk sensibly about girls' c*nts.” — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Present-day Spain translates as many books into Spanish, annually, as the Arab world has translated into Arabic in the past 1,100 years. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Steven Pinker says, the invention of printing and the widespread appearance of fiction - this taught empathy. If you read a novel,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“Yeah,' I said and started smoking another cigarette. Unless I inform you otherwise, I'm always smoking another cigarette.” — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“barrios; each barrio has two or three gangs, and all the gangs are theoretically” — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I'm not interested in making a diagnostic novel or a concern. I'm 100 percent committed in fiction to the pleasure principle - that's what… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“If we all downed tools and joined hands for ten minutes and stopped believing in money, then money would no longer exist. We never… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
When I see a lot of young faces in the audience, it's just sort of sinking in how important that is. Because you're old… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
“I was informed by my viscera that now was the time to put my arm around her shoulders. I ignored them.” — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that the world is there to be celebrated by writers, and in fact this is what all… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
In her final months Princess Diana was being shat upon by the tabloids -- basically for sleeping with an Arab. When she died, these… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
If you feel you have a strong constituency among the young, you can really die happy, because the great unanswered question, the only valid… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
![“…Here we come close to one of the definitions of literary fiction. Even the best kind of popular novel just comes straight at you; you have no conversation with a popular novel. Whereas you do have a conversation (you have an intense argument) with [literary fiction].” quote by Martin Amis](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/976/martin-amis-704_books_here-we-come-close-to-one-of-the-definit_2294595.jpg)
