Books Quotes by Martin Amis

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

— Martin Amis

No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see.

— Martin Amis

“Give the reader hell. Stretch the reader.”

— Martin Amis

You can't sort of write the novel as if you're taking dictation from heaven.

— Martin Amis

Often it doesn't occur to you what kind of novel you're writing until quite late on.

— Martin Amis

He didn't want to please his readers. He wanted to stretch them until they twanged.

— Martin Amis

Don't dumb down; always write for your top five percent of readers.

— Martin Amis

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

Deciding to write a novel about something - as opposed to finding you are writing a novel around something - sounds to…

— Martin Amis

When we read, we are doing more than delectating words on a page stories, characters, images, notions. We are communing with the…

— Martin Amis

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

“…This remains the great deficiency of literature: its imitation of nature cannot prepare you for the main events. For the main events,…

— Martin Amis

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

“Since Henry Miller's Tropic books, of course, it has become difficult to talk sensibly about girls' c*nts.”

— Martin Amis

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

“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

It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has…

— Martin Amis

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

Watching an adaptation of your novel can be a violent experience: seeing your old jokes suddenly thrust at you can be alarming.…

— Martin Amis

“…Here we come close to one of the definitions of literary fiction. Even the best kind of popular novel just comes straight…

— Martin Amis

As someone once said, covers to a novel are like bars to a cage. You can watch the tiger, the Komodo dragon,…

— Martin Amis

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

When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because…

— Martin Amis

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

“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

Sex is hard to write about because you lose the universal and succumb to the particular. We all have our different favorites.…

— Martin Amis

“Some junk novels were all about airports. Some junk novels were even called things like Airport. Why, then you might ask, was…

— Martin Amis

“Nuclear weapons could bring about the Book of Revelation in a matter of hours; they could do it today. Of course, no…

— Martin Amis

Steven Pinker says, the invention of printing and the widespread appearance of fiction - this taught empathy. If you read a novel,…

— Martin Amis

“...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

“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

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

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

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

When I go back to the core of my childhood, my cousin Lucy seems always to be in the peripheral vision of…

— Martin Amis

“Whatever junk novels were, however they worked, they were close to therapy, and airports were close to therapy. They both belonged to…

— Martin Amis

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

The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you…

— Martin Amis

No novel has ever changed anything, as far as I can see. And the great satirists, like Swift and Dickens, tend to…

— Martin Amis