Ten of the best Martin Amis quotations

Martin Amis new novel, 2014: As Zone of Interest is published (21st August), Joe Lloyd surveys Amis's controversial career through ten of his quotes

Few contemporary writers attract as much praise and scorn as Martin Amis. His novels Money (1984) and London Fields(1989) have become acknowledged classics of their decade, but he’s also been accused of riding off the success of his father Kingsley. His statements on world affairs and modern Britain have courted controversy even as his clever postmodern twists, bleakly comic caricature and arresting prose style continue to command admiration. There is no living British writer as famous for his private and public life as well as his written work.  

Amis’ literary career began with 1973’s The Rachel Papers, a frank, semi-autobiographical account of his teenage sexual awakening. A stream of witty short novels saw him develop his craft, until the incendiary Money saw the arrival of his mature style. A portrait of a hedonistic yuppie in Thatcherite London, it’s a vibrant, manic satire of consumerism that uncovers the moral laxity of its age. London Fields , often regarded as his masterpiece, is even more excoriating. It was omitted from the Booker shortlist after two of the judges objected to Amis’ treatment of female characters. Accusations of misogyny have haunted his work ever since, magnified by his perceived playboy lifestyle.

After the concentration camp novel Time’s Arrow (1991), told in reverse chronological order, The Information (1995) was met with general approval while Amis was attacked for his £500,000 advance and abandonment of his long-term agent Pat Kavanagh. For the next decade, his fiction writing slowed down and the praise dried up, though the memoir Experience (2000) was lauded as one of his very best books. Even as his writing receded, however, he maintained a strong public profile through a series of provocative comments on everything from Islam to euthanasia.

The past few years have seen something of resurgence, boosted by his media presence. The Pregnant Widow (2010) has been claimed as his return-to-form, but 2012’s Lionel Asbo (2012) was critiqued for being a retread of his earlier works. It also drew outrage for its patronising portrayal of working class characters and presumption to comment on British society from his new home in America. The pre-release reviews ahead of this year’s  The Zone of Interest  (2014), though, suggest that it might be one of his most intriguing works yet – a nightmarish romantic comedy set in a surrogate Auschwitz.

Even when his novels have received mixed reactions as works of fiction, his writing – which transforms the English language into knottily hilarious forms, with black wit meeting high farce and ingenious cultural references – consistently dazzles. Here are ten quotes, spanning his career, that epitomise his work and outlook.

TEN OF THE BEST MARTIN AMIS QUOTATIONS

“Take a look at the scaly witches round your local shopping centre, many of them with children. Grim enough with their clothes on. Imagine them naked! Snatches that yo-yo between their knees, breasts so flaccid you could tie them in a knot. One would have to be literally galvanised on Spanish Fly even to consider it. Yet it gets done somehow.”

The Rachel Papers  (novel, 1973)

“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.”

Money (novel, 1984)

“Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun.”

Introduction to  Einstein's Monsters  (short story collection, 1987)

“People? People are chaotic quiddities living in one cave each. They pass the hours in amorous grudge and playback and thought experiment. At the campfire they put the usual fraction on exhibit, and listen to their own silent gibber about how they're feeling and how they're going down. We've been there.

Death helps. Death gives us something to do. Because it's a fulltime job looking  the other way.” 

London Fields  (novel, 1989)

“Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.”

Time's Arrow  (novel, 1991)

“Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life”

 Overheard in The Independent (1997)

“The trouble with life is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it’s always the same beginning, and the same ending.” 

Experience (memoir, 2000)

“My life looked good on paper – where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”

Experience (memoir, 2000)

“I have been outflanked by the culture. I am now seen as a drawling Oxonian, and a genetic elitist, who took over the family firm. People subconsciously think that I was born in 1922, wrote Lucky Jim when I was 7, and will live for at least a century. This feels odd to me, because my father was a "angry young man" and helped democratise the British novel. I'm not a toff. I'm a yob.” 

Interview  with the  Washington Post  (2003)

“There’s a definite urge  - don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’”

Interview  with  The Times  (2006)

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