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Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means ... the need to be left. I am driven to grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.

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
Needs
Politics
Party
Grudging
Means
Toleration
Lost
Resistance
Left
Driven
Political
Conservative
Need
Older
Mean
Growing

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Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.
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Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.
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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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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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It is no wonder that people are so horrible when they start life as children.
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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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Be glad you're fifty - andThat 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!
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It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.
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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.
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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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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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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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Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
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If you are using an adverb, you have got the verb wrong.
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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.
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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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I am always incorrigibly interested in the behaviour of the 'human animal', and look forward to perusing divers effusions of your lively pen.
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I once wrote deduceable instead of deducible in a book, though nobody then or since has taken me up on it. A small point as they go, perhaps, but Rule I of writing acceptably is to get everything right as far as you can, and in this case I had neglected to.
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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