“ I am too old a hand to be put off pleasure by even the certain prospect of not enjoying it. ”
Jake was close to tears. In that moment he saw the world in its true light, as a place where nothing had ever been any good and nothing of significance done: no art worth a second look, no philosophy of the slightest appositeness, no law but served the state, no history that gave an inkling of how it had been and what had happened. And no love, only egotism, infatuation and lust.
~ Kingsley Amis
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: 'You atheist?'Kingsley Amis: 'Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.
If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.
Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.
