Martin Amis
Martin Amis
Martin Louis Amisis a British novelist. His best-known novels are Moneyand London Fields. He has received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his memoir Experience and has been listed for the Booker Prize twice to date. Amis served as the Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester until 2011. In 2008, The Times named him one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 August 1949
allowed class classes several task took written
Several people, not just reviewers, took me to task for writing about what they called the working classes - something I've been doing for 40 years. I thought that was contemptible - what do they want to do, ghettoize the working class as a subject? Can you only write about your own class? I've written about royalty, am I not allowed to do that?
children class evil
How incredibly avaricious the whole operation was, the way they made the Jews pay for their tickets in the railway cars to the death camps. Yeah, and the rates for a third-class ticket, one way. And half price for children.... It was a kind of exploration of evil. Just how bad can we get?
hero class america
In America, the policeman is a working-class hero. In England, the policeman is a working-class traitor.
witty thinking class
The middle class is doing fine in fiction. But it's not what gets me going. I love the working class, and everyone from it I've met, and think they're incredibly witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there.
witty thinking class
I love the working class, and everyone from it that I've met, and think they're incredible witty, inventive - there's a lot of poetry there. A lot of rough stuff as well. What there is, too, is an awful lot of expressiveness and intelligence and originality down there. And a lot of thwarted intelligence.
anathema ask conscious directing fiction freedom injury might otherwise people serious
People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.
cared given god religion
If God existed, and if He cared for humankind, He would never have given us religion.
adaptation experience jokes money novel seeing suddenly thrust violent watching
Watching an adaptation of your novel can be a violent experience: seeing your old jokes suddenly thrust at you can be alarming. But I started to enjoy 'Money' very quickly, and then I relaxed.
art grow lion
Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without the thorn.
age four heroes pregnant seemed tried wrote
When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak.
letting novel putting state until
The process of writing a novel is getting to know more about the novel until you know everything about it. And it's been described as a kind of dreamlike state where you're letting the novel make its own shape, and you're putting into it the pleasure of creation, which is intoxicating.
belief nonsense written
My belief is that everything that's written about you is actually secondary showbiz nonsense, and you shouldn't take any notice of it.
real thinking long
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.
girl heart use
You use a different part of your heart with girls.