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Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.

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
Preliminary
Training
Needed
Wanted

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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A German wine label is one of the things life's too short for.
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Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
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It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
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He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
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I've been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first fifteen years didn't produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems--very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That's a point in one's favor.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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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Politics is a thing that only the unsophisticated can really go for.
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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Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?' Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.
Kingsley Amis
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It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.
Kingsley Amis
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Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
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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.
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If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
Kingsley Amis