Quotes from The Information

Martin Amis ·  374 pages

Rating: (4.7K votes)


“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It's nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that...Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and sob probes, and you would mark them. Women--and they can be wives, lovers, gaunt muses, fat nurses, obsessions, devourers, exes, nemeses--will wake and turn to these men and ask, with female need-to-know, "What is it?" And the men will say, "Nothing. No it isn't anything really. Just sad dreams.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Some junk novels were all about airports. Some junk novels were even called things like Airport. Why, then you might ask, was there no airport called Junk Novel? …Junk novels have been around for at least as long as non-junk novels, and airports haven’t been around for very long at all. But they both really took off at the same time. Readers of junk novels and people in airports wanted the same thing: escape, and quick transfer from one junk novel to another junk novel and from one airport to another airport.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“there in the night their bed had the towelly smell of marriage.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“You couldn't catch a yawn from someone you didn't like.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information



“And then there is the information, which is nothing, and comes at night.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a...person. How about being a spider, Gwyn. Let's imagine you're a spider. You're a spider, and you've just had your first serious date. You're limping away from that now, and you're looking over your shoulder, and there's your girlfriend, eating one of your legs like a chicken drumstick. What would you say? I know. You'd say: I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I find I always think in terms of...spiders
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Being photographed was dead time for the soul. Can the head think, while it does the same half smile under the same light frown? If this was all true, then Richard's soul was in great shape. No one photographed him any more, not even his wife. When the photographs came back from an increasingly infrequent holiday. Richard was never there..an elbow or earlobe on the edge of the frame, on the edge of life and love..”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Richard didn't mind Gwyn being rich...Having always been poor was good preparation for being rich. Better than having always been rich...The well and all its sweet water would surely one day run dry.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“He was in a terrible state - that of consciousness.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information



“These days he smoked and drank largely to solace himself for what drinking and smoking had done to him, so he drank and smoked a lot. He experimented, furthermore, with pretty well any other drug he could get his hands on,”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Perché piangono gli uomini? Per colpa delle lotte e delle gesta e della maratona delle promozioni, perché vogliono la mamma, perché restano ciechi anche col passar del tempo, per colpa di tutte le erezioni che debbono inventarsi sul più bello dal nulla, per colpa di tutto ciò che hanno fatto. Perché non possono più essere felici o tristi – solo sbronzi o pazzi. E perché non sanno che pesci pigliare quando sono svegli.
E poi c'è l'informazione, che arriva di notte.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Whatever junk novels were, however they worked, they were close to therapy, and airports were close to therapy. They both belonged to the culture of the waiting room. Piped music, the language of calming suasion. Come this way--yes, the flight attendant will see you now. Airports, junk novels: they were taking your mind off mortal fear.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Girls, in those days, couldn't do anything to you (they couldn't call the lawyers, the tabloids, the cops) except kill themselves or get pregnant. All they had was life: they could augment it, they could bear it away. They could subtract from it or they could add to it; and that was all.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Literature...describes a descent. First, gods. Then demigods. Then epic became tragedy: failed kings, failed heroes. Then the gentry. Then the middle class and its mercantile dreams. Then it was about you--Gina, Gilda: social realism. Then it was about them: lowlife. Villains. The ironic age...Literature, for a while, can be about us...:about writers. But that won't last long. How do we burst clear of all this? And he asked them: Whither the novel? ... Supposing...that the progress of literature (downward) was forced in that direction by the progress of cosmology (upward--up, up). For human beings, the history of cosmology is the history of increasing humiliation. Always hysterically but less and less fiercely resisted, as one illusion after another fell away.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information



“And what was astrology? Astrology was the consecration of the homocentric universe. Astrology went further than saying that the stars were all about us. Astrology said that the stars were all about me.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


“Demi's linguistic quirk is essentially and definingly female. It just is. Drawing in breath to denounce this proposition, women will often come out with something like, "Up you!" or "Ballshit!" For I am referring to Demi's use of the conflated or mangled catchphrase--Demi's speech-bargains: she wanted two for the price of one. The result was expressive, and you usually knew what she meant, given the context.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information


About the author

Martin Amis
Born place: in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, The United Kingdom
Born date August 25, 1949
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Jesus. I love you so fucking much; you would think I was growing a vagina.”
― Aurora Rose Reynolds, quote from Until Trevor


“There was a limit to how many insults a man could swallow in silence.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from New Spring


“Felix can’t act his way out of a box.” “Boxes are tricky,” Felix said, frowning. “And sometimes they’re taped shut.”
― Shannon Hale, quote from The Actor and the Housewife


“UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley UFV毕业证公证【加Q微744043126】加拿大办理菲莎河谷大学UFV毕业证#制做成绩单#做加拿大大学毕业证#代办真实文凭认证the Fraser Valley”
― Angie Sage, quote from Flyte


“She sniffed again. "If I become a vampire, will I stop crying every time I get pissed off? Because that would be definite mark in the plus column."
Carwyn chuckled. "I've no idea, but your tears would be kind of pink. Very...cute."
"Great," she swiped at her cheeks that were dusted with salty frost. "So I'd look stupid and I'd stain my clothes.”
― Elizabeth Hunter, quote from This Same Earth


Interesting books

The Angry Tide
(3.7K)
The Angry Tide
by Winston Graham
The White Rose
(1K)
The Go-Giver: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea
(9.2K)
The Go-Giver: A Litt...
by Bob Burg
Yes Man
(7.9K)
Yes Man
by Danny Wallace
In a Strange Room
(2.8K)
In a Strange Room
by Damon Galgut
Crazy Horse and Custer
(4.7K)
Crazy Horse and Cust...
by Stephen E. Ambrose

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.