Quote

Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.

Martin Amis

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Martin Amis
Age: 75
Memoirist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Abertawe
Martin Louis Amis
Internal
External
Cinema
Concern
Literature
Broadly
Concerns
Internals

More quotes by Martin Amis

Image
Much modern prose is praised for its terseness, its scrupulous avoidance of curlicue, etcetera. But I don't feel the deeper rhythm there. I don't think these writers are being terse out of choice. I think they are being terse because it's the only way they can write.
Martin Amis
Image
Faith is a talent, and it goes the way of all your talents. Getting old is the subtraction of your powers. Which very much goes for writing.
Martin Amis
Image
Every 10 years you're a different person, and the really great books evolve with you as you get older. They're full of new rewards.
Martin Amis
Image
It's hard to make progress with grief.
Martin Amis
Image
It is straightforward — and never mind, for now, about plagues and famines: if God existed, and if he cared for humankind, he would never have given us religion.
Martin Amis
Image
The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.
Martin Amis
Image
It's often said of American politics that it's a huge juggernaut and the president can change the direction by two or three degrees in either direction, but not much more. In fact, I think the president's power is limited, much more than the prime minister in England.
Martin Amis
Image
My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.
Martin Amis
Image
They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.
Martin Amis
Image
I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow.
Martin Amis
Image
Is there any good reason why we cannot extend our multi-cultural generosity to include another dimension? That of time. The past, too, is another country. Its ghosts may look strange and frightening and slightly misshapen in body and mind, but all the more reason then, to welcome them to our shores.
Martin Amis
Image
They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.
Martin Amis
Image
I think a lot of people who read fiction are interested in subtlety. But they wouldn't like my stuff. It's a bit too violent for many tastes.
Martin Amis
Image
It's tremendously important how you get on with the other sex. Your life record on that is incredibly important. You never really think about any of your other achievements.
Martin Amis
Image
Saul Bellow says, funny enough, what French think of your work is tremendously important. And it is. It's more than what the Italians, the Spanish, and the Germans think. Somehow it's still got that cultural primacy. I feel that too: to get praised in France is better than to get praised anywhere else.
Martin Amis
Image
I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right.
Martin Amis
Image
The first thing that distinguishes a writer is that he is most alive when alone.
Martin Amis
Image
You cannot combine being a movie star with not being a movie star.
Martin Amis
Image
When things are going well, you do have the sense that what you’re writing is being fed to you in some way. Auden compared writing a poem to cleaning an old piece of slate until the letters appear. The only way you could reveal your god is perhaps under hypnosis. It’s sacred and it’s secret, even to the writer.
Martin Amis
Image
But before we face experience, that miserable enemy, let us have some more innocence, just for a while.
Martin Amis