Martin Louis Amis (b.1949) is an English novelist, journalist, and short-story writer. The son of the celebrated novelist Kingsley Amis, he is famous for his virtuoso storytelling technique and his dark views of present-day English society.
Born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, Amis was educated at Oxford’s Exeter College. He acted in the film A High Wind in Jamaica (1965,) worked for The Times Literary Supplement and New Statesman, and became a full-time writer in 1979.
Amis published his first novel, The Rachel Papers (1973,) when he was just 24 years old. It was followed by two more satires, Dead Babies (1975) and Success (1978.) Subsequent novels include Money (1984,) London Fields (1989,) Time’s Arrow (1991,) The Information (1995,) Yellow Dog (2003,) House of Meetings (2006,) and The Pregnant Widow (2010.) Primarily set against a backdrop of contemporary urban life, his works are distinguished for their black humor and inventive use of language.
Amis has also written essays and much literary journalism; his Einstein’s Monsters (1986) is a short-story collection on the subject of nuclear destruction.
Amis is a celebrated public intellectual and is a frequent guest on television programs. His decades-long friendship with polemist Christopher Hitchens was one of the most prominent and productive literary relationships of his era.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Martin Amis
More will mean worse.
—Martin Amis
Addictions do come in handy sometimes: at least you have to get out of bed for them.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Perspective
Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I’m too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.
—Martin Amis
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark-spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It’s passing, yet I’m the one who’s doing all the moving.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Time
Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Money
Weapons are like money; no one knows the meaning of enough.
—Martin Amis
Topics: War, Meaning, One liners
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Peace
Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Style
Every writer hopes or boldly assumes that his life is in some sense exemplary, that the particular will turn out to be universal.
—Martin Amis
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Margaret Drabble English Novelist
- J. G. Ballard English Novelist
- E. M. Forster English Novelist
- Doris Lessing British Novelist, Poet
- H. G. Wells English Novelist, Historian
- Graham Greene British Novelist
- Brian Aldiss English Novelist
- Jeanette Winterson English Novelist
- P. D. James British Novelist
- Ray Bradbury American Science-Fiction Writer