Quote

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

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
Mind
Cared
Never
Plague
Would
Humankind
Existed
Atheist
Famines
Atheism
Plagues
Religion
Famine
Given
Straightforward

More quotes by Martin Amis

Image
Most writers need a wound, either physical or spiritual.
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
Suicide is what everyone young thinks they'll do before they get old. But they hardly ever get round to it. They just don't want to commit themselves in that way. When you're young and you look ahead, time ends in mist at twenty-five. 'Old won't happen to me', you say. But old does. Oh, old does. Old always gets you in the end.
Martin Amis
Image
I say the sentences again and again in my head until they sound right.
Martin Amis
Image
Novelists are stamina merchants, grinders, nine-to-fivers, and their career curves follow the usual arc of human endeavour.
Martin Amis
Image
When I hear about some sensational new writer I sort of think, Shut up ... you've got to be around for a long time before you can really say you're a writer. You've got to stand the test of time, which is the only real test there is.
Martin Amis
Image
Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.
Martin Amis
Image
I am, incidentally, the only writer to have received the Somerset Maugham award twice - the first time for my first novel, the second time for my second first novel.
Martin Amis
Image
Tennis: the most perfect combination of athleticism, artistry, power, style, and wit. A beautiful game, but one so remorselessly travestied by the passage of time.
Martin Amis
Image
The process of writing a novel begins with a pang, a moment of recognition, and a situation, a character, or something you read in a paper, that seems to go off, like a solar flare inside your head.
Martin Amis
Image
The air itself was ebony, like the denial, the refutation, of the idea of light.
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
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
The future could go this way, that way. The future's futures have never looked so rocky. Don't put money on it. Take my advice and stick to the present. It's the real stuff, the only stuff, it's all there is, the present, the panting present.
Martin Amis
Image
It sounds schmaltzy to say, but fiction is much more to do with love than people admit or acknowledge. The novelist has to not only love his characters - which you do, without even thinking about it, just as you love your children. But also to love the reader, and that's what I mean by the pleasure principle.
Martin Amis
Image
Don't I ever do anything else but take soulful walks down the Bayswater Road, I thought, as I walked soulfully down the Baywater Road.
Martin Amis
Image
When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable
Martin Amis
Image
Very broadly, literature concerns itself with the internal, cinema with the external.
Martin Amis
Image
I'm afraid the negative things are always the great subjects. Failure is much more interesting than success.
Martin Amis
Image
They did more than take our youth away. They also took away the men we were going to be.
Martin Amis