Kingsley Amis
Born: 04-15-1922
Kingsley Amis was a renowned British novelist, poet, and critic, known for his sharp wit and satirical prose. Born in 1922, he gained fame with his debut novel "Lucky Jim" in 1954, which became a classic of post-war British literature. Over his career, he wrote over 20 novels, including "The Old Devils," which won the Booker Prize in 1986. Amis's work often explored themes of social change and human folly.
Book summaries for books written by Kingsley Amis
Quotes
The only way to behave to a woman is to make love to her if she is pretty and to someone else if she is plain.
He wanted to see the world as a place where things could be done, and not as a place where nothing could be done.
He felt that he was being swept away into a vortex of disillusionment, which always seemed to him part of the process of falling in love.
Life can get you down, but it can really put on a good show while it's doing it.
The world, he thought, was divided into two parts—those who just did not have the time for sentimental nonsense and those who were carried away by it.
Sometimes he wondered why he ever came to college at all—why he did not simply go out and do something useful.
His thoughts ranged vaguely from one aspect of his life to another without any illumination to help him bring them into order or unity.
He was conscious of himself as a man on the fringes of things, like those seedy, hangdog people who go to seed conspicuously in foreign towns.
It was not so much the thought of seeing her again that irritated him as the thought of another evening spent in the Centre of Owls.
Jim knew nothing about art, but he was learning a lot about pretension.
He looked cheered to see him in trouble, as though the world were a more orderly and intelligible place when all of them were in trouble together.
The prospect of the party filled him with a leaden and despairing apprehension.