“In general, writers never find out how strong their talent is: that investigation begins with their obituaries. In the USSR, writers found… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
All writers of fiction will at some point find themselves abandoning a piece of work - or find themselves putting it aside,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
America has had much more respect for its writers because they had to define what America was. America wasn't sure what it… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
It's not that you get a cliché and then wiggle it about or use synonyms. You don't take an ordinary decorative paragraph… — 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
Probably all writers are at some point briefly under the impression that they are in the forefront of disintegration and chaos, that… — 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
“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
When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Dickens is a much misunderstood and mis-approached writer, in that he tends to be read, particularly in the twentieth century, as a… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
All novelists write in a different way, but I always write in longhand and then do two versions of typescript on a… — 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
I would say that the writers I like and trust have at the base of their prose something called the English sentence.… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I think all writers have a bit of genius in them, and a bit of talent. Genius retreats but talent improves. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
America is proud of what it does to its writers, the way it breaks and bedevils them, rendering them deluded or drunken… — 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
“It takes three or four years before the present day sinks in to you as a novelist. It has not just to… — 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
Seeing the world anew, as if it were new, is as old as writing. It's what all painters are trying to do,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
You never can tell, though, with suicide notes, can you? In the planetary aggregate of all life, there are many more suicide… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right. — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
We live in the age of mass loquacity.We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
This (writing) is the love of your life. It's what I want to do when I wake up. Nothing feels so absorbing,… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there.… — Martin Amis Copy Share Image
To idealize: all writing is a campaign against cliché. Not just clichés of the pen but clichés of the mind and clichés… — 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
