We should be wrong to demand that a critic must stay on the point all the time; it is enough if he remains in orbit around it.

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

Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' "Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.

You'll find that marriage is a good short cut to the truth. No, not quite that. A way of doubling back to the truth. Another thing you'll find is that the years of illusion aren't those of adolescense, as the grown-ups try to tell us; they're the ones immediately after it, say the middle twenties, the false maturity if you like, when you first get thoroughly embroiled in things and lose your head. Your age, by the way, Jim. That's when you first realize that sex is important to other people besides yourself. A discovery like that can't help knocking you off balance for a time.

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.

Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.