Kingsley Amis citations

“I'll pour you the first one and after that, if you don't have one, it's your own f****** fault. You know where it is.”

“Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.”

“… all his faces were designed to express rage or loathing. Now that something had happened which really deserved a face, he had none to celebrate it with. As a kind of token, he made his Sex Life in Ancient Rome face.”

“The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.”

“There was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.”

“Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.
Wherever you happen to be
They bring it to you—free.”

“A great British prime minister once remarked that the people were divided into two nations, the rich and the poor, and in effect that these had no knowledge of each other. One might say the same, perhaps, of those who live in parts of the world where segregation by races is practised. But these barriers, or the reasons for them, belong to a part of our history which is fortunately passing away. There is one barrier, however, which no amount of progress or tolerance or legislation can ever diminish. I'm talking about the barrier between the attractive and the unattractive.”

“You can't screw the rich, something in Ronnie muttered as Miss Quick got off him with quite as much alacrity as she had got on him. You have to let them screw you. Or else you leave out screwing altogether.”

“Oh, I see,' said Jenny. 'But you're just getting these men [New Age gurus] to help you all feel better. I thought when you talked about helping people you meant other people. You know, like the blind.'
'Isn't everybody blind, in one way or another?' asked Wendy.”

“If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.”

“A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn't allow it to spoil your lunch.”

“He was short on the one attribute certain to meet the immediate respect of the rich — i. e. being rich — and must therefore obtrude deterrents against being buggered about.”

“While he was climbing the litter-strewn steps his left ball gave a sharp twinge, on and off like a light-switch, then again after he had sat down. Nothing. Just one of the aches and pains that come and go. No significance.”

“It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.”

“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.”

“Nothing divided people more deeply than how they felt about cats.”

“Man's love is of man's life a thing apart;
Girls aren't like that.”

“There isn't another other sex. (p. 254)”

“Your attitude measures up to the two requirements of love. You want to go to bed with her and can't, and you don't know her very well. Ignorance of the other person topped up with deprivation, Jim. You fit the formula all right, and what's more you want to go on fitting it.”

“You're still the same girl. What people do doesn't change their nature.'
She shook her head. […] 'What they do is their nature,' she said.”

“Shitty things are always simple. Same as great things. Patrick Standish, in conversation.”

“Should you revisit us
Stay a little longer
And get to know the place…
On local life we trust
The resident witness
Not the royal tourist.”

“It’s quite a problem for retired people, I do see. All of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast. All those hours with nothing to stay sober for. Or nothing to naturally stay sober during, if you see what I…We used to laugh at Malcolm’s dad, the way he used to mark up the wireless programs in Radio Times in different-coloured pencils. Never caught him listening to any of them but it was an hour taken care of.”

“Be glad you're fifty — and
That you got there while things were nice,
In a world worth looking at twice.
So here's wishing you many more years,
But not all that many. Cheers!”

“Any man in the company of two women is outnumbered four to one however amiable they may be.”

“Friendship includes charity. But there's no charity in sex.”

“More will mean worse.”

“From an outsider's point of view, a naked woman out of doors is either a sun-worshipper or a rape victim; a man in the same state is either a sexual criminal or a plain lunatic.”

“I told myself that I could soon start to relish the state of being alone […], only to find as usual that I was stuck with myself.[…] Two's company, which is bad enough in all conscience, but one's a crowd.”