Ed Gange > Ed's Quotes

“Belief is otiose; reality is sufficiently awesome as it stands.”
― Martin Amis, The Second Plane: September 11, 2001-2007

“The ad world used to be something of a refuge for literary types. But I feared for myself at J.W.T. It seemed to be entirely peopled by blocked dramatists, likeably shambling poets, and one-off novelists. The whole place felt like a clubworld sunset home for literary talent. ”
― Martin Amis, Experience

“And while Trish stared - stared, as it now seemed, into her own eyes - Guy held her hand and watched the crowd: how it bled colour from the enormous room and drew all energy towards itself, forming one triumphal being; how it trembled, then burst or came or died, releasing individuality; and how the champion was borne along on its subsidence, his back slapped, his hair tousled, mimed by female hands and laughing, like the god of mobs.”
― Martin Amis, London Fields

“He tortured, not to force you to reveal a fact, but to force you to collude in a fiction.”
― Martin Amis, Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million

“A writer’s life is half ambition and half anxiety, and there has to be both. It is no good writing a novel and feeling fine, and it is no good writing a whole novel feeling miserable. It has to be both, that mixture of anxiety and ambition, and you get that with every novel, but more so when you write about these epics of human suffering. I felt that just as much when I wrote about the Gulag. Every writer knows what that is. The process goes… you have to think: ‘This novel I am writing is no good.’ Then you have to think: ‘All my novels are no good.’ And then, when you reach that point, you can begin.”
― Martin Amis

“It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end.”
― Albert Camus

“We're going forward, but nothing changes.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“But what does it mean, the plague? It's life, that's all.”
― Albert Camus, The Plague

“You always get exaggerated notions about things you don't know anything about.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“People don't love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that's all. Later on, when you're old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That's all it is.”
― Albert Camus, A Happy Death

“Not for the first time Laing reflected that he and his neighbors were eager for trouble as the most effective means of enlarging their sex lives.”
― J.G. Ballard, High-Rise

“As Miriam released my hand I felt that she and Midwife Bell had returned to a more primitive world, where men never intruded and even their role in conception was unknown. Here the chain of life was mother to daughter, daughter to mother. Fathers and sons belonged in the shadows with the dogs and livestock, like the retriever growling at Midwife Bell's unfamiliar car from the window of my neighbours' living room.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Kindness of Women

“On the morning after the storm the body of a drowned giant was washed ashore on the beach five miles to the north-west of the city.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Complete Short Stories

“Never,' I said. 'One can die but once. Dim died before he was born. That red red krovvy will soon stop.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Ich muss Sie darauf hinweisen, dass Sie im Augenblick bis zur Hüfte in der Scheiße stecken und dass die Scheiße immer tiefer wird. Und ich nehme nicht an, dass Sie schwimmen können.”
― Richard Bachmann

“You've got a shitty habit, you know it? I've noticed it on all those TV drive-safely pitches that you do. You breathe in people's ears. You sound like a stallion in heat, Philbrick. That's a shitty habit. You also sound like you're reading off a teleprompter, even when you're not. You ought to take care of stuff like that. You might save a life.”
― Richard Bachman, Rage

“„»Ich hatte Angst«, sagte er.
»Leute, die keine haben, sterben jung«,”
― Richard Bachmann

“Nun, es gibt noch etwas anderes, an das ich glaube, William. Ich glaube, was ich sehe. Aus dem Grund bin ich ein relativ reicher Mann. Vor allem aber bin ich deshalb auch ein lebendiger Mann. Die meisten Menschen glauben einfach nicht, was sie sehen.”
― Richard Bachmann

“Aber die alten Zeiten haben mich zum alten Mann gemacht, mein Freund, und wenn ein alter Mann Angst hat, dann geht er nicht einfach so auf eine Sache los, wie er’s getan hat, als er gerade dabei war, zu lernen, wie man sich rasiert.”
― Richard Bachmann

“...sie würden Christus persönlich überfallen, um ein Pfund Salami zu ergattern.”
― Richard Bachman, The Running Man

“Peddle one of the least harmful drugs humanity's ever discovered, and you get twenty years. Peddle something that kills a hundred thousand a year... and you get a knighthood.”
― Iain Banks, Espedair Street

“There is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.”
― Iain Banks, The Bridge

“Each of us, in our own personal Factory, may believe we have stumbled down one corridor, and that our fate is sealed and certain (dream or nightmare, humdrum or bizarre, good or bad), but a word, a glance, a slip - anything can change that, alter it entirely, and our marble hall becomes a gutter, or our rat-maze a golden path. Our
destination is the same in the end, but our journey - part chosen, part determined- is
different for us all, and changes even as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins.”
― Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory

“Sometimes he missed the numbed, walking-underwater feeling feel that the cocktail of narcotics used to give him. But if a situation went down in here, he was going to need all of his wits to get out of it.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Zombie Room

“I'm not into this whole "move with the times" thing. I reckon we should just decide on a year and stick with it.”
― R.D. Ronald

“Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.”
― R.D. Ronald, The Elephant Tree

“I think we're simply going to run out of Nature before we have a chance to destroy it.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet