Martin Amis on being left-wing

Now THAT'S being left-wing: you lie awake on your narrow cot, listening to the only other piece of furniture in the room - the hulking wardrobe, as the beetles eat it.

Saul Bellow on death

The dark backing a mirror needs if we are to see anything.

Martin Amis on Kingsley Amis

To a baby born without limbs.

This is just to show you whose boss around here.

It’ll keep you on your toes, so to speak,

Make you put your best foot forward, so to speak,

And give you something to turn your hand to, so to speak.

You can face up to it like a man,

Or snivvle and blubber like a baby.

That’s up to you. Nothing to do with Me.

If you take it in the right spirit,

You can have a bloody marvelous life,

With the great rewards courage brings,

And the beauty of accepting your LOT.

And think how much good it’ll do your Mum and Dad,

And your Grans and Gramps and the rest of the shower,

To be stopped being complacent.

Make sure they baptise you, though,

In case some murdering bastard

Decides to put you away quick,

Which would send you straight to LIMB-O, ha ha ha.

But just a word in your ear, if you’ve got one.

Mind you DO take this in the right spirit,

And keep a civil tongue in your head about Me.

Because if you DON’T,

I’ve got plenty of other stuff up My sleeve,

Such as Leukemia and polio,

(Which incidentally your welcome to any time,

Whatever spirit you take this in.)

I’ve given you one love-pat, right?

You don’t want another.

So watch it, Jack.

Martin Amis - Here we have the voice of omnipresent evil, but also the voice of atrocity, with its brutish facetiousness, its clunking puns. Here we have the murdering bastard who can't even spell, you can't even parse, who can't even write.

V.S.Naipal on contemporary culture

It is terrible this very plebeian culture, an aggressive plebeian culture that celebrates itself for being plebeian.

Orwell

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those would do us harm.

E.F.Benson

I never lived my life at all. I only stayed and lunched with it.

Trollope on Patriotism

One is patriotic because one is too small and weak to be cosmopolitan.