On Saturday 8th June 2013 Martin Amis came to the Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas where he was interviewed by Sinead Gleeson. Here are some quotes....
On Women
"I am a gyno-crat"
On Thatcher
"My father had sex dreams about Margaret Thatcher. She was like the nanny who would spank your bottom. Christopher Hitchens told me once, "She stinks of sex".
On Katie Price
"She tried 100% as a mother. I struggled through four or five volumes of her autobiography. She updates you on her boyfriends".
On Christopher Hitchens
"He was the best company on earth. We made friends in our twenties. We lived our lived in parallel. We married at the same time. We had kids at the same time. We divorced at the same time. We got remarried at the same time. We had more kids at the same time. You lose a double. A secret sharer"
On reviews
"I don't read them. I get a level of insult that no-one else gets. I'm like Prince Charles. Kingsley is the king. I don't give them headspace. I need my mind to myself".
On himself
"When I was 30 the idea of a bottle of wine and a five hour read of me was the perfect evening"
On Writing
"Writing is ambition and anxiety in equal parts. There has to be that tension within you"
"When we say we love a writers work, we really only like half of it"
"A novel comes to you like a little de ja vu. A scene, a character, a moment that strikes you oddly".
"Write about what you know"
"A novel complies itself. Once the structure is there, it feeds on itself"
"Writing is celebratory. It is saying, isn't this worthy of wonder?"
"English poetry is the greatest on earth"
"Writers go off around the age of 70"
"Artists die twice. Once when the talent dies, second when you die"
"A poem stops the clock. It says LOOK AT ME, let's have this interaction"
"I'm not a reader of the young. I read the dead".
"I would only write a children's book if I sustained a very serious head injury"
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