The egotism of people who are eminent without being in the least distinguished and somehow feeling that's their due - that seems to me to be a peculiarly English phenomenon.
Martin AmisYou know, I wouldnโt have done this a month ago. I wouldnโt have done it then. Then I was avoiding. Now Iโm just waiting. Things happen to me. They do. They have to go ahead and happen. You watch โ you waitโฆ Things still happen here and something is waiting to happen to me. I can tell. Recently my life feels like a bloodcurdling joke. Recently my life has taken on *form* Something is waiting. I am waiting. Soon, it will stop waiting โ any day now. Awful things can happen any time. This is the awful thing.
Martin AmisIt was the tiredness of time lived, with its days and days. It was the tiredness of gravity- gravity, which wants you down in the center of the earth.
Martin AmisIt's not that you get a clichรฉ and then wiggle it about or use synonyms. You don't take an ordinary decorative paragraph and give it style. What you're trying to do is be faithful to your perceptions and transmit them as faithfully as you can. I say these sentences until they sound right. There's no objective reason why they're right. They just sound right to me.
Martin Amis