Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.
Martin AmisNovelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.
Martin AmisIf you want to know the real meaning of pornography, it is the utter dissociation of love and sex, the banishment of love from the sexual arena.
Martin AmisI am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel.
Martin AmisWhat did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.
Martin Amis