Inspirational Quotes by Kingsley Amis (English Novelist, Poet)

Sir Kingsley Amis (1922–95) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and academic. His wife was the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard; his son was the novelist Martin Amis.

Born in London, Amis was educated at the City of London School and St John’s College-Oxford. He was a lecturer in English literature at University College, Swansea, 1948–61, and Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge, 1961–63.

Amis achieved popular success with his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954.) This high-spirited satire on middle-class and academic aspirations set in a provincial university became a classic of post-1945 British fiction. “Jim,” its comic anti-hero, is a well-intentioned junior history professor, who, hoping to impress the new chancellor, succeeds only in messing up everything he touches. “Jim” also featured as a small-town librarian in Amis’s That Uncertain Feeling (1955,) and as a provincial author abroad in I Like it Here (1958.)

Amis’s other notable works include The Old Devils (1986; Booker Prize,) The Folks that Live on the Hill (1990,) The Russian Girl (1992,) and You Can’t Do Both (1994.)

After the death of spy-novelist Ian Fleming, Amis wrote a James Bond novel, Colonel Sun (1968; pseudonym Robert Markham) and the first “007” critical appraisal The James Bond Dossier (1965.) He also published four books of poetry and wrote non-fiction works, including one on the history of science fiction.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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

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

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: Politicians, Politics

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
—Kingsley Amis

He was of the faith chiefly in the sense that the church he currently did not attend was Catholic.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Churches, Religion

A German wine label is one of the things life’s too short for, a daunting testimony to that peculiar nation’s love of detail and organization.
—Kingsley Amis
Topics: Wine

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Inspirational Quotes by Kingsley Amis (English Novelist, Poet)

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