Background Image
...
Unless I Specifically Inform You Otherwise, I'm Always Smoking Another Cigarette.
-Martin Amis
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

Unless I Specifically Inform

Martin Amis
...
Unless I Specifically Inform You Otherwise, I'm Always Smoking Another Cigarette.

Understanding the Quote: "unless i specifically inform you otherwise, i'm always smoking another cigarette...."

This quote by Martin Amis reflects deeply on the theme of smoking. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Smoking, Cigarette, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Martin Amis interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Martin Amis

Martin Amis is celebrated for insightful thoughts on smoking and cigarette. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 73884
Topic
Smoking
Cigarette
More From Martin Amis
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 Fiction Is, And Should Be.
Principles
Fiction
Pleasure
That Certain Snobbery Of Certainly The Parisian - Combined With A Complete Denial Of Your Historical Legacy, Is Just Awful. That's A Funny Thing About France. Saul Bellow Wrote Somewhere That He Saw Right Through The French. He Lived There. He Wrote The Adventures Of Augie March In Paris, And There's No One Better Than Him To Say What's Unbearable About The French.
Adventure
Historical
Legacy
He Was An Artist When He Saw Society: It Never Crossed His Mind That Society Had To Be Like This; Had Any Right, Had Any Business Being Like This. A Car In The Street. Why? Why Cars? This Is What An Artist Has To Be: Harassed To The Point Of Insanity Or Stupefaction By First Principles.
Artist
Car
Insanity
Unless I Specifically Inform You Otherwise, I'm Always Smoking Another Cigarette.
Smoking
Cigarette
Because We Are All Poets Or Babies In The Middle Of The Night, Struggling With Being.
Baby
Struggle
Night
Faith Is A Talent, And It Goes The Way Of All Your Talents. Getting Old Is The Subtraction Of Your Powers. Which Very Much Goes For Writing.
Writing
Way
Talent
Novelists Are Stamina Merchants, Grinders, Nine-to-fivers, And Their Career Curves Follow The Usual Arc Of Human Endeavour.
Curves
Careers
Novelists
The First Thing That Distinguishes A Writer Is That He Is Most Alive When Alone.
Alive
Firsts
The Argument, Now, Is About Whether Bolshevik Russia Was 'better' Than Nazi Germany. In The Days When The New Left Dawned, The Argument Was About Whether Bolshevik Russia Was Better Than America.
War
Russia
America
In The Concordance Of Nicola Six's Kisses There Were Many Subheads And Subsections, Many Genres And Phyla - Chapter And Verse, Cross-references, Multiple Citations.
Kissing
Six
Crosses
Your Purpose When Driving Is Not To Arrive At Your Destination Safely Or Quickly. Your Purpose When Driving Is...to Impress Your Personality On The Road.
Personality
Purpose
Driving
Don't Dumb Down; Always Write For Your Top Five Percent Of Readers.
Writing
Dumb
Reader
I Would Say That The Writers I Like And Trust Have At The Base Of Their Prose Something Called The English Sentence. An Awful Lot Of Modern Writing Seems To Me To Be A Depressed Use Of Language. Once, I Called It "vow-of-poverty Prose." No, Give Me The King In His Countinghouse. Give Me Updike.
Kings
Writing
Giving
I Am Easily Moved To Tears And Rarely Survive A Visit To The Cinema Without Shedding Them, Racked, As I Am, By The Most Perfunctory, Meretricious Or Even Callously Sentimental Attempts At Poignancy (something About The Exterior Of The Human Face, So Vast And Palpable, With The Eyes And The Lips: It Is All Writ Too Large For Me, Too Immediate For Me.)
Eye
Tears
Cinema
All My Adult Life I Have Been Searching For The Right Adjective To Describe My Father's Peculiarly Aggressive Comic Style. I Recently Settled On 'defamatory.
Father
Style
Adults
I'm Afraid The Negative Things Are Always The Great Subjects. Failure Is Much More Interesting Than Success.
Interesting
Negative
Subjects
My Literary Career Kicked Off In 1956 When, As A Resident Of Swansea, South Wales, I Published My First Novel, 'lucky Jim.
Careers
Lucky
Firsts
America Is Proud Of What It Does To Its Writers, The Way It Breaks And Bedevils Them, Rendering Them Deluded Or Drunken Or Dead By Their Own Hands. To Overpower Its Tender Spirits Makes America Feel Tough. Careers Are Generally Short.
Hands
Careers
America
Deciding To Write A Novel About Something - As Opposed To Finding You Are Writing A Novel Around Something - Sounds To Me Like A Good Evocation Of Writer's Block.
Block
Writing
Sound
Because We Are All Poets Or Babies In The Middle Of The Night, Struggling With Being.
Baby
Struggle
Night
So If You Ever Felt Something Behind You, When You Weren't Even One, Like Welcome Heat, Like A Bulb, Like A Sun, Trying To Shine Right Across The Universe - It Was Me. Always Me. It Was Me. It Was Me.
Shining
Trying
Across The Universe
Style Is Not Neutral; It Gives Moral Directions.
Giving
Style
Moral
This (writing) Is The Love Of Your Life. It's What I Want To Do When I Wake Up. Nothing Feels So Absorbing, So Fulfilling.
Writing
Wake Up
Want
Amis Is Acutely, Vibrantly Sensitive To The Different Registers Of Laughter. He Knows That It Can Be The Most Affirming And Uniquely Human Sound, And Also The Most Sinister And Animalistic One. He Understands Every Note Of Every Octave That Separates The Liberating Shout Of Mirth From The Cackle Of A Bully Or The Snigger Of A Sadist.
Laughter
Book
Bully
It's Good Fun To Create An Unpredictable Character. When He Comes Into The Room, I Don't Know What He's Going To Do - I Have To Find My Way.
Fun
Character
Way
Probably All Writers Are At Some Point Briefly Under The Impression That They Are In The Forefront Of Disintegration And Chaos, That They Are Among The First To Live And Work After Things Fall Apart.
Fall
Firsts
Chaos
It Is Quite An Achievement. People Of Liberal Sympathies, Stupefied By Relativism, Have Become The Apologists For A Creedal Wave That Is Racist, Misogynist, Homophobic, Imperialist, And Genocidal. To Put It Another Way, They Are Up The Arse Of Those That Want Them Dead.
People
Achievement
Arses
Love Is Blind; But It Makes You See The Blind Man; Teetering On The Roadside . . .
Love Is
Men
Blind
Well, My Father Kingsley Amis Was A Writer And It Seemed Natural To Start Writing In My Late Teens. I Think It Was Good That I Began When I Was Young And Bold And Foolish, Otherwise I'd Have Become Too Self-conscious And Aware Of The Weight Of Not Having Written Anything Yet.
Father
Writing
Thinking
While Making Love, We Often Talk About Money. I Like It. I Like That Dirty Talk
Dirty
Making Love
Dirty Talk
My 12-year-old Daughter Said To Me, "enough With The Subtitles, Daddy, For Crying Out Loud." Because They Always Seem To Cloud The Issue Rather Than Clarify It.
Daughter
Clouds
Years
Saul Bellow Says, Funny Enough, What French Think Of Your Work Is Tremendously Important. And It Is. It's More Than What The Italians, The Spanish, And The Germans Think. Somehow It's Still Got That Cultural Primacy. I Feel That Too: To Get Praised In France Is Better Than To Get Praised Anywhere Else.
Thinking
Important
Enough
All That Rejection From Republicans Has A Bit Of A Racist Element. It Was Very Necessary To Have A Black President, And It's Been A Great Thing. It Will Help, In The End, To Ease The Trauma Of Slavery And Civil War. The War Against Slavery Cost Almost 800,000 American Lives - That's How Strongly They Felt About It. And It's Not Going To Go Away In A Century.
War
Rejection
Black
Closure Is A Greasy Little Word Which, Moreover, Describes A Nonexistent Condition. The Truth, Venus, Is That Nobody Gets Over Anything.
Venus
Littles
Closure
As Someone Once Said, Covers To A Novel Are Like Bars To A Cage. You Can Watch The Tiger, The Komodo Dragon, And Admire It - Its Heart, Its Severity. Even When They Carry Out An Ugly Act, It's Still Fascinating.
Heart
Ugly
Admire
It's Not That You Get A Cliché 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.
Writing
Giving
Faithful
It Is Straightforward — And Never Mind, For Now, About Plagues And Famines: If God Existed, And If He Cared For Humankind, He Would Never Have Given Us Religion.
Atheist
Mind
Atheism
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 Who You're Directing The Story To Is Anathema To Me, Because, In My View, Fiction Is Freedom And Any Restraints On That Are Intolerable.
Children
Book
Writing
When Things Are Going Well, You Do Have The Sense That What You’re Writing Is Being Fed To You In Some Way. Auden Compared Writing A Poem To Cleaning An Old Piece Of Slate Until The Letters Appear. The Only Way You Could Reveal Your God Is Perhaps Under Hypnosis. It’s Sacred And It’s Secret, Even To The Writer.
Writing
Hypnosis
Secret
So I Am Lonely, But Not Alone, Like Everybody Else.
Lonely
I Am Lonely
Not Alone
Very Broadly, Literature Concerns Itself With The Internal, Cinema With The External.
Cinema
Literature
Concern
If 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.
Sex
Real
Want
No Novel Has Ever Changed Anything, As Far As I Can See.
Changed
Novel
I Can
Time, The Human Dimension, Which Makes Us Everything We Are.
Time
Dimensions
Humans
Never Content Just To Be, America Is Also Obliged To Mean; America Signifies, Hence Its Constant And Riveting Vulnerability To Illusion.
Mean
America
Illusion
It's Been Said That Happiness Writes White. It Doesn't Show Up On The Page. When You're On Holiday And Writing A Letter Home To A Friend, No One Wants A Letter That Says The Food Is Good And The Weather Is Charming And The Accommodations Comfortable. You Want To Hear About Lost Passports And Rat-filled Shacks.
Home
Writing
Holiday
The Process Of Writing A Novel Begins With A Pang, A Moment Of Recognition, And A Situation, A Character, Or Something You Read In A Paper, That Seems To Go Off, Like A Solar Flare Inside Your Head.
Writing
Character
Paper
The Only Writer Who Gives Me Unfeigned Pleasure Is P.g. Wodehouse. And Even Him I Find A Bit Heavy. He Takes A Lot Out Of Me. Scratching My Hair, With Soft Whistles, With Lips Aquiver, I Frown Over Sunset At Blandings.
Sunset
Hair
Giving
Egotism Exists Everywhere, But It Has A Different Flavor In England, Where The Tabloid Culture Goes Much Deeper. It's Just The Indulgence Of Vulgarity, The Wallowing In Vulgarity. As With Everything English, There's A Sort Of Irony To It. They Write A Great Deal About These Trivial People Who Have A Certain Eminence, Always With A Bit Of, "isn't It Ridiculous That We Are Writing About This Person?"
Writing
People
Different
Style Isn't Something Added On; It's Intrinsic To The Perceptions And The Way You See Life.
Perception
Style
Way
When It Comes To Flying, I Am A Nervous Passenger But A Confident Drinker And Valium-swallower.
Flying
Aviation
Nervous
I Think Writers Are Excited By Stupidity And Bad Behavior, Generally.
Thinking
Stupidity
Excited
Oh Christ, The Exhaustion Of Not Knowing Anything. It's So Tiring And Hard On The Nerves. It Really Takes It Out Of You, Not Knowing Anything. You're Given Comedy And Miss All The Jokes. Every Hour You Get Weaker. Sometimes, As I Sit Alone In My Flat In London And Stare At The Window, I Think How Dismal It Is, How Heavy, To Watch The Rain And Not Know Why It Falls.
Rain
Fall
Thinking
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.
People
Feelings
Egotism
We Hear About The Successful "texanisation" Of The Republican Party. And Doesn't Texas Sometimes Seem To Resemble A Country Like Saudi Arabia, With Its Great Heat, Its Oil Wealth, Its Brimming Houses Of Worship, And Its Weekly Executions?
Country
Texas
Oil
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 Fiction Is, And Should Be.
Principles
Fiction
Pleasure
We Live In The Age Of Mass Loquacity.we Are All Writing It Or At Any Rate Talking It: The Memoir, The Apologia, The C.v., The Cri De Coeur.
Writing
Talking
Age
People Are Always Talking On Their Phones, Or Looking At Their Phones, Because They Don't Want To Be Alone With Their Thoughts.
Phones
Talking
People
I Would Say I'm An Ironist Not A Satirist. All You Do Is You Take Existing Tendencies And Crank Them Up, Just Turn Up The Volume Dial. Which Is A Technique Of Science Fiction, Apart From Anything Else.
Technique
Fiction
Crank
When I Talk About The Pleasure Principle, I Don't Say There Is Only One Kind Of Pleasure, There Are Many Kinds Of Pleasure. Some Pleasure Is Difficult. It Should Be For The Reader As Well As The Writer. But It Has To Be Pleasure.
Principles
Kind
Pleasure
One Thing You Can't Help Noticing In South America And In Latin Culture, Generally, Is How Nice People Are. Although When I Went Back To Spain - My Mother Lived In Spain And Both My Brothers Lived There - After The Uruguay Trip, I Thought, "oh Great, Hispanic People." But They Weren't Nearly As Nice As The Uruguayans. They're Quite Proud And Pissed Off, The Spaniards.
Mother
Brother
Latin
I Think Jorge Borges Said That When Argentineans Die They Turn Into Angels And Go And Live In Uruguay. But For The Rest Of South America, You Have To Say That It's Getting There - Becoming Civilized - And Will Get There. It's Had A Real Grit War In History. The Choice Between Those Societies Until Recently Was The Choice Between Tyranny And Chaos. Everyone Understood That. You've Got To Have A Strong Man, Or It's Going To Be A Mess.
Strong
Real
War
But Before We Face Experience, That Miserable Enemy, Let Us Have Some More Innocence, Just For A While.
Enemy
Faces
Innocence
At Its Grandest, Political Correctness Is An Attempt To Accelerate Evolution.
Political
Evolution
Correctness
I Don't Think I've Ever Been Particularly Scared Of Death - But Scared Of Dying, The Process. It Doesn't Seem To Be A Good Way Of Doing It.
Thinking
Dying
Way
The Air Itself Was Ebony, Like The Denial, The Refutation, Of The Idea Of Light.
Light
Air
Ideas
Novelists Tend To Go Off At 70, And I'm In A Funk About It, I've Got Myself Into A Real Paranoid Funk About It, How The Talent Dies Before The Body.
Real
Novelists
Body
I Hire Tea By The Tea Bag.
Money
Food
Cooking
The Literary Interview Won't Tell You What A Writer Is Like. Far More Compellingly To Some, It Will Tell You What A Writer Is Like To Interview.
Interviews
Don't Dumb Down; Always Write For Your Top Five Percent Of Readers.
Writing
Dumb
Reader
The Trouble With Life Is Its Amorphousness, Its Ridiculous Fluidity. Look At It: Thinly Plotted, Largely Themeless, Sentimental And Ineluctably Trite. The Dialogue Is Poor, Or At Least Violently Uneven. The Twists Are Either Predictable Or Sensationalist. And It’s Always The Same Beginning, And The Same Ending.
Twists
Looks
Fluidity
Love Might Have Expanded Her. But We Are Not All Of Us Going To Get Loved. We Are Not All Of Us Going To Get Expanded.
Might
All Novelists Write In A Different Way, But I Always Write In Longhand And Then Do Two Versions Of Typescript On A Computer.
Writing
Two
Novelists
Who Would Want The Socialist Utopia? Especially If You Were At All Artistic - You Want All Those Inequalities, Because That's What Makes Life Interesting.
Interesting
Want
Artistic
I Don't Think I'd Like Manhattan Anymore. My Mother-in-law Lives There, And You Go There. But I Like Looking At It From A Distance. It's A Fantastic Sight - Every Time, It Awes Me.
Mother
Distance
Thinking
Let Me Assure You That The Humourless As A Bunch Don't Just Not Know What's Funny, They Don't Know What's Serious. They Have No Common Sense, Either, And Shouldn't Be Trusted With Anything.
Humor
Common Sense
Serious
Love Is Blind; But It Makes You See The Blind Man; Teetering On The Roadside . . .
Love Is
Men
Blind
You Can Kill Time In A Number Of Ways But It Always Depends On The Kind Of Time You're Fighting: Some Time Is Unkillable, Immortal
Time
Fighting
Numbers
Bullets Cannot Be Recalled. They Cannot Be Uninvented. But They Can Be Taken Out Of The Gun.
Peace
Military
Taken
You Can't Sort Of Write The Novel As If You're Taking Dictation From Heaven.
Writing
Heaven
Novel
It's Good Fun To Create An Unpredictable Character. When He Comes Into The Room, I Don't Know What He's Going To Do - I Have To Find My Way.
Fun
Character
Way
So I Am Lonely, But Not Alone, Like Everybody Else.
Lonely
I Am Lonely
Not Alone
Dickens Is A Much Misunderstood And Mis-approached Writer, In That He Tends To Be Read, Particularly In The Twentieth Century, As A Social Commentator - Like The Great Victorians, A Realist In His Way. But He Isn't At All Like That. His Genre Is Actually More Like A Fairy Tale - Weird Transformations, Long Voyages From Which People Come Back Altered, Parental Mysteries, Semi-magical Twists.
Genre Is
Long
People
There's A Lot Of Anti-intellectualism In Britain. And The Writer's Views On This Or That Are Really Of Less Importance, As They See It, Than That Of The Man In The Street.
Men
Views
He Man
Kingsley Amis Was A Lenient Father. His Paternal Style, In The Early Years, Can Best Be Described As Amiably Minimalist - In Other Words, My Mother Did It All.
Mother
Father
Years
Weapons Are Like Money; No One Knows The Meaning Of Enough.
Weapons
Enough
Arms Race
Is There Any Good Reason Why We Cannot Extend Our Multi-cultural Generosity To Include Another Dimension? That Of Time. The Past, Too, Is Another Country. Its Ghosts May Look Strange And Frightening And Slightly Misshapen In Body And Mind, But All The More Reason Then, To Welcome Them To Our Shores.
Country
Past
Generosity
Present-day Spain Translates As Many Books Into Spanish, Annually, As The Arab World Has Translated Into Arabic In The Past 1,100 Years.
Book
Past
Years
You Can't Sort Of Write The Novel As If You're Taking Dictation From Heaven.
Writing
Heaven
Novel
Novelists Are Stamina Merchants, Grinders, Nine-to-fivers, And Their Career Curves Follow The Usual Arc Of Human Endeavour.
Curves
Careers
Novelists
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 Who You're Directing The Story To Is Anathema To Me, Because, In My View, Fiction Is Freedom And Any Restraints On That Are Intolerable.
Children
Book
Writing
Writers Spend Too Much Time Among Dead Things. I Thought That Was Profound And Actually True, That You're Trying To Pump Life Into Something That Is Inanimate. You See What A Sort Of Audacious Thing It Is To Move These Sort Of Imaginary People Around In A Very Stylized And Patterned World.
Moving
People
Profound
For Both Of Us, I Think, It Had To Do With Our Weakened Power To Love. It Is Strange That Enslavement Should Have That Effect – Not Just The Fantastic Degradation, Not Just The Fear And The Boredom And All The Rest, But Also The Layered Injustice, The Silent Injustice. So All Right. We’re Back Where We Started. To You, Nothing – From You, Everything. They Took It From Me, It Seems, For No Reason, Other Than That I Value It So Much.
Thinking
Should Have
Boredom
The Champions Of Militant Islam Are, Of Course, Misogynists, Woman-haters; They Are Also Misologists - Haters Of Reason. Their Armed Doctrine Is Little More Than A Chaotic Penal Code Underscored By Impotent Dreams Of Genocide. And, Like All Religions, It Is A Massive Agglutination Of Stock Response, Of Cliches, Of Inherited And Unexamined Formulations.
Dream
Champion
Islam
America Is A Younger Country Than England, Obviously, And As Self-awareness Is Forming In America - Are We A Collection Of Immigrants, Are We A Load Of Italians And Germans And Jews And Brits And Irish, Or Are We A Country With A Soul And An Identity? - There Was A Subliminal Sense, They Knew That The Writers Would Be The Ones Who Would Answer Those Questions.
Country
Self
America
I've Always Said That The Big Difference Between South America And North America With Regard To The Native Population Is That In North America They Raped Them And Killed Them, And In South America They Raped Them And Married Them. The Mix Was Much Greater, And That Was Very Good.
Married
Very Good
Native
There's A Lot Of Anti-intellectualism In Britain. And The Writer's Views On This Or That Are Really Of Less Importance, As They See It, Than That Of The Man In The Street.
Men
Views
He Man
It's Often Said Of American Politics That It's A Huge Juggernaut And The President Can Change The Direction By Two Or Three Degrees In Either Direction, But Not Much More. In Fact, I Think The President's Power Is Limited, Much More Than The Prime Minister In England.
Thinking
President
If Every Inhabitant Of A Liberal Democracy Believes In Liberal Democracy, Then It Doesn't Matter What Creed Or Colour They Are.
Believe
Democracy
Matter
One Of The Unseen Benefits Of Having Children Is That They Deliver You From Your Own Selfishness. There's No Going Back.
Children
Father
Selfishness
The First Thing That Distinguishes A Writer Is That He Is Most Alive When Alone.
Alive
Firsts
Money Doesn't Mind If We Say It's Evil, It Goes From Strength To Strength. It's A Fiction, An Addiction, And A Tacit Conspiracy.
Evil
Addiction
Mind
My Life Looked Good On Paper - Where, In Fact, Almost All Of It Was Being Lived.
Paper
Facts
What Did Nabokov And Joyce Have In Common, Apart From The Poor Teeth And The Great Prose? Exile, And Decades Of Near Pauperism.
Teeth
Common
Poor
Time, The Human Dimension, Which Makes Us Everything We Are.
Time
Dimensions
Humans
It's An Ancient Idea That The Leader Of A Democracy Should Not Be The Cleverest But The Most Average. That's An Arguable Point, But The World Has Decided Otherwise - Except In America, Where It Still Divides The Country Right Down The Middle.
Country
Average
Ideas
Who's Straight? I'm Not. I Am Bent Gouged Pinched And Tugged At, And Squeezed Into This Funny Shape. Each Life Is A Game Of Chess That Went To Hell On The Seventh Move, And Now The Flukey Play Is Cramped And Slow, A Dream Of Constraint And Cross-purpose, With Each Move Forced, All Pieces Pinned And Skewered And Zugzwanged... But Here And There We See These Figures Who Appear To Run On The True Lines, And They Are Terrible Examples. They're Rich, Usually.
Running
Dream
Moving
Faith Is A Talent, And It Goes The Way Of All Your Talents. Getting Old Is The Subtraction Of Your Powers. Which Very Much Goes For Writing.
Writing
Way
Talent
Amis Is Acutely, Vibrantly Sensitive To The Different Registers Of Laughter. He Knows That It Can Be The Most Affirming And Uniquely Human Sound, And Also The Most Sinister And Animalistic One. He Understands Every Note Of Every Octave That Separates The Liberating Shout Of Mirth From The Cackle Of A Bully Or The Snigger Of A Sadist.
Laughter
Book
Bully
Saul Bellow Says, Funny Enough, What French Think Of Your Work Is Tremendously Important. And It Is. It's More Than What The Italians, The Spanish, And The Germans Think. Somehow It's Still Got That Cultural Primacy. I Feel That Too: To Get Praised In France Is Better Than To Get Praised Anywhere Else.
Thinking
Important
Enough
Everything Seems Fine Until You're About 40. Then Something Is Definitely Beginning To Go Wrong. And You Look In The Mirror With Your Old Habit Of Thinking, 'while I Accept That Everyone Grows Old And Dies, It's A Funny Thing, But I'm An Exception To That Rule.
Thinking
Mirrors
Funny Things
It's Interesting When You're Doing Signing Sessions With Other Writers And You Look At The Queues At Each Table And You Can See Definite Human Types Gathering There.... My Queue Is Always Full Of, You Know, Wild-eyed Sleazebags And People Who Stare At Me Very Intensely, As If I Have Some Particular Message For Them. As If I Must Know That They've Been Reading Me, That This Dyad Or Symbiosis Of Reader And Writer Has Been So Intense That I Must Somehow Know About It.
Reading
People
Interesting
Style Isn't Something Added On; It's Intrinsic To The Perceptions And The Way You See Life.
Perception
Style
Way
Someone Watches Over Us When We Write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.
Mother
Teacher
Writing
On Any Longer View, Man Is Only Fitfully Committed To The Rational -- To Thinking, Seeing, Learning, Knowing. Believing Is What He's Really Proud Of.
Believe
Men
Thinking
I'm Afraid The Negative Things Are Always The Great Subjects. Failure Is Much More Interesting Than Success.
Interesting
Negative
Subjects
Suicide Is What Everyone Young Thinks They'll Do Before They Get Old. But They Hardly Ever Get Round To It. They Just Don't Want To Commit Themselves In That Way. When You're Young And You Look Ahead, Time Ends In Mist At Twenty-five. 'old Won't Happen To Me', You Say. But Old Does. Oh, Old Does. Old Always Gets You In The End.
Suicide
Thinking
Age
Kingsley Amis Was A Lenient Father. His Paternal Style, In The Early Years, Can Best Be Described As Amiably Minimalist - In Other Words, My Mother Did It All.
Mother
Father
Years
People? People Are Chaotic Quiddities Living In One Cave Each. They Pass The Hours In Amorous Grudge And Playback And Thought Experiment. At The Campfire They Put The Usual Fraction On Exhibit, And Listen To Their Own Silent Gibber About How They're Feeling And How They're Going Down. We've Been There. Death Helps. Death Gives Us Something To Do. Because It's A Fulltime Job Looking The Other Way.
Jobs
People
Giving
It Seems To Me That You Need A Lot Of Courage, Or A Lot Of Something, To Enter Into Others, Into Other People. We All Think That Everyone Else Lives In Fortresses, In Fastnesses: Behind Moats, Behind Sheer Walls Studded With Spikes And Broken Glass. But In Fact We Inhabit Much Punier Structures. We Are, As It Turns Out, All Jerry-built. Or Not Even. You Can Just Stick Your Head Under The Flap Of The Tent And Crawl Right In. If You Get The Okay.
Wall
Thinking
Glasses
Sometimes I Feel That Life Is Passing Me By, Not Slowly Either, But With Ropes Of Steam And Spark - Spattered Wheels And A Hoarse Roar Of Power Or Terror. It's Passing, Yet I'm The One Who's Doing All The Moving.
Time
Moving
Sparks
Sex Is Hard To Write About Because You Lose The Universal And Succumb To The Particular. We All Have Our Different Favorites. Good Sex Is Impossible To Write About. Lawrence And Updike Have Given It Their All, And The Result Is Still Uneasy And Unsure. It May Be That Good Sex Is Something Fiction Just Can't Do - Like Dreams. Most Of The Sex In My Novels Is Absolutely Disastrous. Sex Can Be Funny, But Not Very Sexy.
Sexy
Dream
Writing
You Know, I Wouldn’t Have Done This A Month Ago. I Wouldn’t Have Done It Then. Then I Was Avoiding. Now I’m Just Waiting. Things Happen To Me. They Do. They Have To Go Ahead And Happen. You Watch – You Wait… 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 – Any Day Now. Awful Things Can Happen Any Time. This Is The Awful Thing.
Taken
Waiting
Watches
I Want Incremental Improvements. There's The Record Of All The Revolutionary And Violent Change And Extremism In General - It's Dreadful.
Records
Want
Improvement
He Was An Artist When He Saw Society: It Never Crossed His Mind That Society Had To Be Like This; Had Any Right, Had Any Business Being Like This. A Car In The Street. Why? Why Cars? This Is What An Artist Has To Be: Harassed To The Point Of Insanity Or Stupefaction By First Principles.
Artist
Car
Insanity
The Children Of The Nuclear Age, I Think, Were Weakened In Their Capacity To Love. Hard To Love, When You're Bracing Yourself For Impact. Hard To Love, When The Loved One, And The Lover, Might At Any Instant Become Blood And Flames, Along With Everybody Else.
Children
Thinking
Impact
Sometimes I Feel That Life Is Passing Me By, Not Slowly Either, But With Ropes Of Steam And Spark - Spattered Wheels And A Hoarse Roar Of Power Or Terror. It's Passing, Yet I'm The One Who's Doing All The Moving.
Time
Moving
Sparks
Well, My Father Kingsley Amis Was A Writer And It Seemed Natural To Start Writing In My Late Teens. I Think It Was Good That I Began When I Was Young And Bold And Foolish, Otherwise I'd Have Become Too Self-conscious And Aware Of The Weight Of Not Having Written Anything Yet.
Father
Writing
Thinking
When Policemen Go To Prison In England, They Have As Bad A Time As A Pedophile.
England
Prison
Policemen
Religious Belief Is Without Reason And Without Dignity, And Its Record Is Near-universally Dreadful.
Religious
Religion
Atheism
If You Feel You Have A Strong Constituency Among The Young, You Can Really Die Happy, Because The Great Unanswered Question, The Only Valid Value Judgment Is Whether You're Going To Last, And That Tells You That You Are, For A Bit At Least.
Strong
Unanswered Questions
Lasts
I Don't Think I've Ever Been Particularly Scared Of Death - But Scared Of Dying, The Process. It Doesn't Seem To Be A Good Way Of Doing It.
Thinking
Dying
Way
That Certain Snobbery Of Certainly The Parisian - Combined With A Complete Denial Of Your Historical Legacy, Is Just Awful. That's A Funny Thing About France. Saul Bellow Wrote Somewhere That He Saw Right Through The French. He Lived There. He Wrote The Adventures Of Augie March In Paris, And There's No One Better Than Him To Say What's Unbearable About The French.
Adventure
Historical
Legacy
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 Enough Now To Identify Them Very Strongly As Being Young - Whereas Before, Of Course They Were Young, Because You Were Young. Now It's Not Like That.
Important
Faces
Enough
Addictions Do Come In Handy Sometimes: At Least You Have To Get Out Of Bed For Them.
Addiction
Bed
Sometimes
Novelists Tend To Go Off At 70, And I'm In A Funk About It, I've Got Myself Into A Real Paranoid Funk About It, How The Talent Dies Before The Body.
Real
Novelists
Body
People? People Are Chaotic Quiddities Living In One Cave Each. They Pass The Hours In Amorous Grudge And Playback And Thought Experiment. At The Campfire They Put The Usual Fraction On Exhibit, And Listen To Their Own Silent Gibber About How They're Feeling And How They're Going Down. We've Been There. Death Helps. Death Gives Us Something To Do. Because It's A Fulltime Job Looking The Other Way.
Jobs
People
Giving
Mere Fact Has No Chance Of Being Formally Perfect. It Will Get In The Way, It Will Be All Elbows.
Perfect
Elbows
Way
I Am Easily Moved To Tears And Rarely Survive A Visit To The Cinema Without Shedding Them, Racked, As I Am, By The Most Perfunctory, Meretricious Or Even Callously Sentimental Attempts At Poignancy (something About The Exterior Of The Human Face, So Vast And Palpable, With The Eyes And The Lips: It Is All Writ Too Large For Me, Too Immediate For Me.)
Eye
Tears
Cinema
[on Stds] This Be Nature’s Way Of Recommending Monogamy.
Way
Stds
Monogamy
Someone Watches Over Us When We Write. Mother. Teacher. Shakespeare. God.
Mother
Teacher
Writing
I Sometimes Feel I'm A Sort Of Cult Writer, Rather Than A Mainstream Writer, In That Those Who Like My Stuff Like It A Lot, But The Appeal Is Not That Broad.
Stuff
Sometimes
Mainstream
When The Sky Is As Grey As This - Impeccably Grey, A Denial, Really Of The Very Concept Of Colour - And The Stooped Millions Lift Their Heads, It's Hard To Tell The Air From The Impurities In Our Human Eyes, As If The Sinking Climbing Paisley Curlicues Of Grit Were Part Of The Element Itself, Rain, Spores, Tears, Film, Dirt. Perhaps, At Such Moments, The Sky Is No More Then The Sum Of The Dirt That Lives In Our Human Eyes.
Rain
Eye
Climbing
It's Tremendously Important How You Get On With The Other Sex. Your Life Record On That Is Incredibly Important. You Never Really Think About Any Of Your Other Achievements.
Sex
Thinking
Achievement
It Is Quite An Achievement. People Of Liberal Sympathies, Stupefied By Relativism, Have Become The Apologists For A Creedal Wave That Is Racist, Misogynist, Homophobic, Imperialist, And Genocidal. To Put It Another Way, They Are Up The Arse Of Those That Want Them Dead.
People
Achievement
Arses
There's Chile And There's Uruguay, And No One Quite Knows Why Uruguay Is So Appealingly Selfless Because They've Had Their Terror And Their Revolution Like All The Rest. But Somehow, There's Something In Them.
Selfless
Revolution
Terror
Very Broadly, Literature Concerns Itself With The Internal, Cinema With The External.
Cinema
Literature
Concern
You Can't Be Up The Reader's Ass, As Many A Writer I Think Is - Cute As Hell, Ingratiating As Hell. But That's Not Loving The Reader In The Right Way. That's Toadying To The Reader.
Cute
Thinking
Way
Most Writers Need A Wound, Either Physical Or Spiritual.
Spiritual
Needs
Wounds
Perhaps There Are Other Bits Of My Life That Would Take On Content, Take On Shadow, If Only I Read More And Thought Less About Money.
Shadow
Bits
Ifs
America Has Had Much More Respect For Its Writers Because They Had To Define What America Was. America Wasn't Sure What It Was.
America
Is There Any Good Reason Why We Cannot Extend Our Multi-cultural Generosity To Include Another Dimension? That Of Time. The Past, Too, Is Another Country. Its Ghosts May Look Strange And Frightening And Slightly Misshapen In Body And Mind, But All The More Reason Then, To Welcome Them To Our Shores.
Country
Past
Generosity
When I Go Back To The Core Of My Childhood, My Cousin Lucy Seems Always To Be In The Peripheral Vision Of My Memories. She Is Off To One Side, Always Off To One Side, With A Book, With A Scheme Or A Project Or An Enterprise.
Cousin
Memories
Book
Sex Was Like Disneyland To Her: An Allotment Of Organized Wonders And Legal Mischief.
Sex
Wonder
Allotments
My Literary Career Kicked Off In 1956 When, As A Resident Of Swansea, South Wales, I Published My First Novel, 'lucky Jim.
Careers
Lucky
Firsts
Since It Is No Longer Permissible To Disparage Any Single Faith Or Creed, Let Us Start Disparaging All Of Them... A Religion Is A Belief System With No Basis In Reality Whatever. Religious Belief Is Without Reason And Without Dignity, And Its Record Is Near-universally Dreadful.
Religious
Reality
Atheism
When The Sky Is As Grey As This - Impeccably Grey, A Denial, Really Of The Very Concept Of Colour - And The Stooped Millions Lift Their Heads, It's Hard To Tell The Air From The Impurities In Our Human Eyes, As If The Sinking Climbing Paisley Curlicues Of Grit Were Part Of The Element Itself, Rain, Spores, Tears, Film, Dirt. Perhaps, At Such Moments, The Sky Is No More Then The Sum Of The Dirt That Lives In Our Human Eyes.
Rain
Eye
Climbing
The Children Of The Nuclear Age, I Think, Were Weakened In Their Capacity To Love. Hard To Love, When You're Bracing Yourself For Impact. Hard To Love, When The Loved One, And The Lover, Might At Any Instant Become Blood And Flames, Along With Everybody Else.
Children
Thinking
Impact
It's Interesting When You're Doing Signing Sessions With Other Writers And You Look At The Queues At Each Table And You Can See Definite Human Types Gathering There.... My Queue Is Always Full Of, You Know, Wild-eyed Sleazebags And People Who Stare At Me Very Intensely, As If I Have Some Particular Message For Them. As If I Must Know That They've Been Reading Me, That This Dyad Or Symbiosis Of Reader And Writer Has Been So Intense That I Must Somehow Know About It.
Reading
People
Interesting
All The Things We Value In Society Don't Mean Much In Fiction.
Mean
Fiction
Values
What 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.
Perseverance
Wife
Style
You Get The Feeling That Childhood Does Not Last As Long As It Used To. Innocence Gets Harder To Hold On To As The World Gets Older, As It Accumulates More Experience, More Mileage And More Blood On The Tracks.
Blood
Long
Track
Each Life Is A Game Of Chess That Went To Hell On The Seventh Move(...)
Moving
Games
Chess
You Never Can Tell, Though, With Suicide Notes, Can You? In The Planetary Aggregate Of All Life, There Are Many More Suicide Notes Than There Are Suicides. They're Like Poems In That Respect, Suicide Notes: Nearly Everyone Tries Their Hand At Them Some Time, With Or Without The Talent. We All Write Them In Our Heads. Usually The Note Is The Thing. You Complete It, And Then Resume Your Time Travel. It Is The Note And Not The Life That Is Cancelled Out. Or The Other Way Round. Or Death. You Never Can Tell, Though, Can You, With Suicide Notes.
Suicide
Writing
Hands
You Can Kill Time In A Number Of Ways But It Always Depends On The Kind Of Time You're Fighting: Some Time Is Unkillable, Immortal
Time
Fighting
Numbers
My Friendship With The Hitch Has Always Been Perfectly Cloudless. It Is A Love Whose Month Is Ever May.
May
Months
My Friendship
Love Is An Abstract Noun, Something Nebulous. And Yet Love Turns Out To Be The Only Part Of Us That Is Solid, As The World Turns Upside Down And The Screen Goes Black.
Love
Black
World
The Uruguayans Have A Sort Of Purity. I Don't Know Where They Got It, And I Doubt Even If They Know From Where They Got It. Perhaps They Didn't Kill Off Their Major Population.
Doubt
Purity
Vidal Gives The Impression Of Believing That The Entire Heterosexual Edifice - Registry Offices, 'romeo And Juliet,' The Disposable Diaper - Is Just A Sorry Story Of Self-hypnosis And Mass Hysteria: A Hoax, A Racket, Or Sheer Propaganda.
Sorry
Believe
Hypnosis
It Is Straightforward — And Never Mind, For Now, About Plagues And Famines: If God Existed, And If He Cared For Humankind, He Would Never Have Given Us Religion.
Atheist
Mind
Atheism
Your Heart Becomes Gangrenous In Your Body When You Go Against Your Talent.
Heart
Body
Talent
The Middle Class Is Doing Fine In Fiction. But It's Not What Gets Me Going. I Love The Working Class, And Everyone From It I've Met, And Think They're Incredibly Witty, Inventive - There's A Lot Of Poetry There.
Witty
Thinking
Class
It's Hard To Make Progress With Grief.
Grief
Progress
Hard
Everyone Is Right Up There At The Very Brink Of Their Pain Limit.
Pain
Limits
What Is The Only Provocation That Could Bring About The Use Of Nuclear Weapons? Nuclear Weapons. What Is The Priority Target For Nuclear Weapons? Nuclear Weapons. What Is The Only Established Defense Against Nuclear Weapons? Nuclear Weapons. How Do We Prevent The Use Of Nuclear Weapons? By Threatening To Use Nuclear Weapons. And We Can't Get Rid Of Nuclear Weapons, Because Of Nuclear Weapons. The Intransigence, It Seems, Is A Function Of The Weapons Themselves.
Priorities
Defense
Nuclear
One Of The Unseen Benefits Of Having Children Is That They Deliver You From Your Own Selfishness. There's No Going Back.
Children
Father
Selfishness
Life Is Made Of Fear. Some People Eat Fear Soup Three Times A Day. Some People Eat Fear Soup All The Meals There Are. I Eat It Sometimes. When They Bring Me Fear Soup To Eat, I Try Not To Eat It, I Try To Send It Back. But Sometimes I'm Too Afraid To And Have To Eat It Anyway.
Fear
People
Trying
He Didn't Want To Please His Readers. He Wanted To Stretch Them Until They Twanged.
Want
Reader
Please
One Of The Many Things I Do Not Understand About Americans Is This: What Is It Like To Be A Citizen Of A Superpower, To Maintain Democratically The Means Of Planetary Extinction. I Wonder How This Contributes To The Dreamlife Of America, A Dreamlife That Is So Deep And Troubled.
Mean
America
Citizens
People Are Always Talking On Their Phones, Or Looking At Their Phones, Because They Don't Want To Be Alone With Their Thoughts.
Phones
Talking
People
Every Day, The Dispensing Of Existence.... Its Face Is Fierce And Distant And Ancient.
Faces
Fierce
Ancient
It's An Ancient Idea That The Leader Of A Democracy Should Not Be The Cleverest But The Most Average. That's An Arguable Point, But The World Has Decided Otherwise - Except In America, Where It Still Divides The Country Right Down The Middle.
Country
Average
Ideas
On Any Longer View, Man Is Only Fitfully Committed To The Rational -- To Thinking, Seeing, Learning, Knowing. Believing Is What He's Really Proud Of.
Believe
Men
Thinking
The Universe Is A Million Billion Light-years Wide, And Every Inch Of It Would Kill You If You Went There. This Is The Position Of The Universe With Regards To Human Life.
Light
Years
Inches
Perhaps There Are Other Bits Of My Life That Would Take On Content, Take On Shadow, If Only I Read More And Thought Less About Money.
Shadow
Bits
Ifs
You Know How It Is When Two Souls Meet In A Burst Of Ecstatic Volubility, With Hearts Tickling To Hear And To Tell, To Know Everything, To Reveal Everything, The Shared Reverence For The Other's Otherness, A Feeling Of Solitude Radiantly Snapped By Full *contact* - All That?
Heart
Two
Soul
He Didn't Want To Please His Readers. He Wanted To Stretch Them Until They Twanged.
Want
Reader
Please
The Literary Interview Won't Tell You What A Writer Is Like. Far More Compellingly To Some, It Will Tell You What A Writer Is Like To Interview.
Interviews
When Communism Failed, It Wasn't A Good Idea That Had Gone Wrong, It Was A Bad Idea That Had Been Sustained With Incredible Determination In The Face Of All The Commonsense Arguments, And At The Cost Of 20 Million Lives At Least, In Russia, To Build The Socialist Utopia.
Determination
Russia
Ideas
I 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.
Awards
Firsts
First Time
[on Stds] This Be Nature’s Way Of Recommending Monogamy.
Way
Stds
Monogamy
Vidal Gives The Impression Of Believing That The Entire Heterosexual Edifice - Registry Offices, 'romeo And Juliet,' The Disposable Diaper - Is Just A Sorry Story Of Self-hypnosis And Mass Hysteria: A Hoax, A Racket, Or Sheer Propaganda.
Sorry
Believe
Hypnosis
I Sometimes Feel I'm A Sort Of Cult Writer, Rather Than A Mainstream Writer, In That Those Who Like My Stuff Like It A Lot, But The Appeal Is Not That Broad.
Stuff
Sometimes
Mainstream
Standing In The Nordic Nook Of The Kitchen, I Can Gaze Down At The Flimsy-limbed Joggers Heading South Towards The Park. It's Nearly As Bad As New York. Some Of These Gasping Fatsos, These Too-little-too-late Artists, They Look As Though They're Running Up Rising Ground, Climbing Ground. My Generation, We Started All This. Before, Everyone Was Presumably Content To Feel Like Death The Whole Time. Now They Want To Feel Terrific For Ever.
Running
New York
Artist
No-one Is Going To Sit Down And Read Bleak House To The Family Any More, But They Can All Huddle Up Happily In Front Of Charles Bronson.
House
Down And
Bleak
We Hear About The Successful "texanisation" Of The Republican Party. And Doesn't Texas Sometimes Seem To Resemble A Country Like Saudi Arabia, With Its Great Heat, Its Oil Wealth, Its Brimming Houses Of Worship, And Its Weekly Executions?
Country
Texas
Oil
More Will Mean Worse.
Mean
Conflict
The Uruguayans Have A Sort Of Purity. I Don't Know Where They Got It, And I Doubt Even If They Know From Where They Got It. Perhaps They Didn't Kill Off Their Major Population.
Doubt
Purity
It 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.
Earth
Want
Gravity
...so In His Own Way Guy Clinch Confronted The Central Question Of His Time, A Question You Saw Being Asked And Answered Everywhere You Looked, In Every Headline And Haircut: If, At Any Moment, Nothing Might Matter, Then Who Said That Nothing Didn't Matter Already?
Guy
Might
Matter
Trending Author
Dee Dee Ramone
Cheryl James
Michael Lewis
Karen Horney
Bindi Irwin
Hans Kung
Category
Information