He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Religion, Churches
When I find someone I respect writing about an edgy, nervous wine that dithered in the glass, I cringe. When I hear someone I don’t respect talking about an austere, unforgiving wine, I turn a bit austere and unforgiving myself. When I come across stuff like that and remember about the figs and bananas, I want to snigger uneasily. You can call a wine red, and dry, and strong, and pleasant. After that, watch out.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Wine
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. Its very nobility makes the results of its breakdown doubly horrifying, and it breaks down, as it always will, not by some external agency but because it cannot work.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Humanity
Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
—Kingsley Amis
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.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Criticism
On hangovers: He resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Alcohol
Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Politics, Politicians
A German wine label is one of the things lifes too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nations love of detail and organization.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Wine
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Terry Pratchett English Fantasy Writer
- Anthony Burgess English Novelist, Critic
- Douglas Adams British Author
- J. R. R. Tolkien British Philologist, Writer
- L. P. Hartley British Writer, Critic
- Ian McEwan (b.1948) British Novelist, Short-story Writer
- Hanif Kureishi British Novelist, Screenwriter
- Philip Pullman English Children’s Author, Dramatist
- Peter Ustinov British Actor, Playwright
- Anthony Hopkins Welsh-American Actor
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