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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.

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
Stay
Wrong
Point
Around
Orbit
Enough
Critic
Must
Critics
Time
Remains
Demand

More quotes by Kingsley Amis

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More always means worse.
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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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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It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.
Kingsley Amis
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Misprize common sense at your peril is my motto.
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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It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.
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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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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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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Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work.
Kingsley Amis
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Man's love is of man's life a thing apartGirls aren't like that.
Kingsley Amis
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Sex is a momentary itch, love never lets you go.
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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He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
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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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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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.
Kingsley Amis
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If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
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