Martin Amis

What did Nabokov and Joyce have in common, apart from the poor teeth and the great prose? Exile, and decades of near pauperism. A compulsive tendency to overtip. An uxoriousness that their wives deservedly inspired. More than that, they both lived their lives 'beautifully'--not in any Jamesian sense (where, besides, ferocious solvency would have been a prerequisite), but in the droll fortitude of their perseverance. They got the work done, with style.
-Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir

My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.
-Martin Amis, Experience: A Memoir

Fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life.
-Martin Amis, Essays

Everyone is right up there at the very brink of their pain limit.
-Martin Amis

He was an artist when he saw society: it never crossed his mind that society had to be like this; had any right, had any business being like this. A car in the street. Why? Why cars? This is what an artist has to be: harassed to the point of insanity or stupefaction by first principles.
-Martin Amis