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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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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
Difficult
Art
Thing
Think
Thinking
European
Elements
American

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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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It is not extraordinary that the extraterrestrial origin of women was a recurrent theme of science fiction.
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Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work.
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It's a letdown if the comedian doesn't finally actually really sit on his hat.
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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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He who truly believes he has a hangover has no hangover.
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Education is one thing and instruction, however worthy, necessary and incidentally or monetarily educative, another.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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Work was like cats were supposed to be: if you disliked and feared it and tried to keep out if its way, it knew at once and sought you out and jumped on your lap and climbed all over you to show how much it loved you. Please God, he thought, don't let me die in harness.
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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.
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