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Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.

Kingsley Amis

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Kingsley Amis
Age: 73 †
Born: 1922
Born: April 16
Died: 1995
Died: October 22
Autobiographer
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
Teacher
Writer
Clapham Common Ward
Sir Kingsley William Amis
Kingsley William Amis
Action
Procedure
Firsts
Procedures
Self
Employment
First
Guide
Must
Guides
Criticism
Rule
Virtue

More quotes by Kingsley Amis

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If there's one word that sums up everything that's gone wrong since the war, it's Workshop. After Youth, that is.
Kingsley Amis
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Feeling a tremendous rakehell, and not liking myself much for it, and feeling rather a good chap for not liking myself much for it, and not liking myself at all for feeling rather a good chap.
Kingsley Amis
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The first, indeed the only, requirement of a diet is that it should lose you weight without reducing your alcoholic intake by the smallest degree.
Kingsley Amis
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With some exceptions in science fiction and other genres I have small difficulty in avoiding anything that could be called American literature. I feel it is unnatural, not I think entirely because it uses a language that is not mine, however closely akin to my own.
Kingsley Amis
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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.
Kingsley Amis
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If you are using an adverb, you have got the verb wrong.
Kingsley Amis
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He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
Kingsley Amis
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Hangover cure: Rigorous sex, hydration, hot bath, then go up for half an hour in an open aeroplane. (needless to say, with a non-hungover person at the controls).
Kingsley Amis
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Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
Kingsley Amis
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I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.
Kingsley Amis
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I wish I could have a little tape-and-loudspeaker arrangement sewn into the binding of this magazine, to be triggered off by the light reflected from the reader's eyes on to this part of the page, and set to bawl out at several bels: MORE WILL MEAN WORSE.
Kingsley Amis
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The ideal of brotherhood of man, the building of the Just City, is one that cannot be discarded without lifelong feelings of disappointment and loss. But, if we are to live in the real world, discard it we must.
Kingsley Amis
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Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
Kingsley Amis
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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.
Kingsley Amis
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Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.
Kingsley Amis
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A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for.
Kingsley Amis
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It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
Kingsley Amis
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If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
Kingsley Amis
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Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European.
Kingsley Amis
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I want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
Kingsley Amis