Martin Amis / Eleven Quotes

Martin Amis
Poster by T.A.

ELEVEN QUOTES

by Martin Amis

The 100 best novels / No 93 / Money: A Suicide Note by Martin Amis (1984)

“Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.”

― Martin Amis

 “Oh Christ, the exhaustion of not knowing anything. It’s so tiring and hard on the nerves. It really takes it out of you, not knowing anything. You’re given comedy and miss all the jokes. Every hour you get weaker. Sometimes, as I sit alone in my flat in London and stare at the window, I think how dismal it is, how heavy, to watch the rain and not know why it falls.”

― Martin Amis, Money: A Suicide Note

“Life is made of fear. Some people eat fear soup three times a day. Some people eat fear soup all the meals there are. I eat it sometimes. When they bring me fear soup to eat, I try not to eat it, I try to send it back. But sometimes I’m too afraid to and have to eat it anyway.”

― Martin Amis, Other People

 “The universe is a million billion light-years wide, and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. This is the position of the universe with regards to human life.”

― Martin Amis

 “Love is an abstract noun, something nebulous. And yet love turns out to be the only part of us that is solid, as the world turns upside down and the screen goes black.”

― Martin Amis, The Second Plane: 14 Responses to September 11

 “Closure is a greasy little word which, moreover, describes a nonexistent condition. The truth, Venus, is that nobody gets over anything.”

― Martin Amis, House of Meetings

“And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.”

― Martin Amis, London Fields

 “He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”

― Martin Amis, The Information

“Only in art will the lion lie down with the lamb, and the rose grow without thorn.”

― Martin Amis

“When the past is forgotten, the present is unforgettable”

― Martin Amis, Other People

“It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns out, all jerry-built. Or not even. You can just stick your head under the flap of the tent and crawl right in. If you get the okay. ”

― Martin Amis, Time’s Arrow

AUSTRALIA UMWRAPPED

Jennifer Aniston / Now and Jen

Now and Jen

In a no-holds-barred interview with Jennifer Aniston, funnywoman Amy Sedaris captures the quirkier side of everyone’s favorite friend.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY: MARIANO VIVANCO; FASHION EDITOR: JOANNA HILLMAN

 SEP 14, 2017

Thanks to her hilarious performances in Office Christmas Party, the Horrible Bosses movies and the cult-favorite Office Space, Jennifer Aniston has earned a reputation as one of Hollywood’s queens of dark comedy. Enter comedian and actress Amy Sedaris for what should have been a straightforward chat with Aniston about her upcoming film project, her latest fragrance (Jennifer Aniston Luxe), and passion for interior design, and things take a slightly twisted turn. Just as she does with the unsuspecting guests on her new show, At Home With Amy Sedaris, premiering this month on truTV, Sedaris deftly steered the talk to bedbugs, seeing ghosts, and the joys of being Greek.

Unusual toothy pterosaur found hidden in the wrong group

The prehistoric flying reptile with oddly dark bones belongs to a whole new genus named after House Targaryen in Game of Thrones.

JOHN PICKREL
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 26, 2019

A fossilized creature with oddly dark bones has emerged as the first of its name in a newly described line of toothy pterosaurs, paleontologists report in the journal Historical Biology. Dubbed Targaryendraco wiedenrothi, in a nod to the fictional House Targaryen from the blockbuster TV series Game of Thrones, the reptile is the most complete Cretaceous pterosaur known from Germany.

George R.R. Martin / Game of Thrones honoured in new classification of pterosaur

George R.R. Martin

Game of Thrones honoured in new classification of pterosaur

Targaryendraco wiedenrothi has been renamed after House of Targaryen in George RR Martin’s fantasy saga

Alison Flood

George RR Martin is celebrating after a palaeontologist, who named a new genus of pterosaur after the dragons of House Targaryen, agreed with him that dragons should have two, rather than four, legs.

Alma Guillermoprieto / Interview / Esther Allen

Alma Guillermoprieto

by Esther Allen

BOMB 87/Spring 2004, LITERATURE

More than a decade ago now, I came across a book titled Samba, by a woman with a long last name, really a first and last name run together, that I recognized: Guillermo Prieto. I was doing research at the time on nineteenth-century accounts of travel between the Americas, and Prieto was one of those travelers. A leading Mexican poet and political figure, Prieto spent some time in exile in the United States during the brief imperial reign of Maximilian and Carlota (1864-67). Later he wrote an account of his journey, published in 1878 under the resonant pseudonym “Fidel.” One phrase from that book has stayed in my memory. “Travel,” Prieto wrote, “is, in the final analysis, the abandonment of personality.”

Erica Simone / Power of Naked

Erica Simone

POWER OF NAKED

Directed by Paul de Luna

Papillon / Review by Paulina Kael

• 

Papillon 

(1973) 

Review by Pauline Kael

Solemnity is a crippling disease that strikes moviemakers when they’re on top: a few big hits and they hire Dalton Trumbo and go into their indomitable-spirit-of-man lockstep. Papillon, the most expensive movie of the year, is a thirteen-and-a-half-million-dollar monument to the eternal desire of moviemakers to win awards and impress people. How can you play around and try out ideas on a property like the Henri Charriere best-seller, which probably cost a couple of million to start with, and with stars (Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman) who defi­nitely cost three and a quarter million between them? It would be like juggling with the Elgin Marbles. What should have been an entertaining escape-from-Devil’s Island thriller, with some laughs, some suspense, and some colorful cutthroats and likable thieves, has been treated not as if it were an escape story but as if it were the escape story. The story has become practically abstract, and for much of the time the movie can’t be bothered telling us where Papillon (Steve McQueen) is escaping from or where he hopes to go. The moviemakers have approached the subject of Papillon (a French safecracker who was sentenced to prison for life for killing a pimp and who, thirty-odd years after he broke out, trumped up his adventures into a best-seller about his many escape attempts) as if they were making an important historical biography — about a pope, at the very least.

Here’s to you, Mrs Robinson: why The Graduate unites warring generations 50 years on

Watching the classic 1967 Dustin Hoffman film in a post-Brexit world of boomerang children lends it a whole new resonance. Which is hardly surprising when you consider the parallels with the era in which it was created

Ellen E Jones
Thursday 15 June 2017 12.30 BST

I

t was the Summer of Love, the first one. Young people were making their voices heard in politics and revealing the widening chasm between themselves and their parents’ generation. The film that summed it all up was The Graduate, released in the US in December 1967, starring Dustin Hoffman as Benjamin Braddock, a despondent 20-year-old who moves back home after finishing college, and Anne Bancroft as Mrs Robinson, the much older women who seduces him.

The Graduate at 50 / why Mrs Robinson almost failed to seduce Hollywood

The Graduate at 50: why Mrs Robinson almost failed to seduce Hollywood

The wicked wit and enigma of Dorothy Parker / 50 years on

The wicked wit and enigma of Dorothy Parker – 50 years on

Fifty years after her death, this master of the one-liner has survived better than the rest of her New Yorker set, but everything you know about her is liable to be wrong

John Dugdale
Friday 16 June 2017 12.00 BST

A bestselling poet who moved on to fiction, Dorothy Parker, who died 50 years ago this month, single-handedly invented “the New Yorker short story”, the kind of debonair but melancholy tale later associated with JD Salinger and John Cheever. She was equally innovative as a critic, pioneering a first‑person style and busting the taboo on hatchet jobs by women when reviewing theatre – she was fired under pressure from Broadway managers after three plays that she had slated closed – and books (as “Constant Reader”, best remembered for her one-liner on AA Milne, “Tonstant Weader Fwowed Up”).

Emil Ratajkowski Sparkles in Sequins for C Magazie Spread

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI SPARKLES IN SEQUINS FOR C MAGAZINE SPREAD

Published on August 24, 2016

Emily Ratajkowski on C Magazine September 2016 Cover

Emily Ratajkowski shines in gold on the September 2016 cover of C Magazine. Captured by Beau Grealy, the model and actress wears an embellished Balmain top and skirts with a wet hairstyle. Inside the magazine, Emily hits the beach in sequins and metallic embroideries from the fall collections. Stylist Alison Edmond selects the designs of Diane von Furstenberg, Just Cavalli, Valentino and more for the brunette to wear.

In her interview, Emily talks about being a feminist, dealing with fame and more. “I keep a low profile,” she tells the magazine. “The worst feeling is when you’re at a restaurant and really feeling comfortable with your friends and then all of a sudden people are looking at you and taking your picture.”

Emily Ratajkowski Strips Down for New Jewerly Campaign

Emily Ratajkowski poses topless for Jacquie Aiche’s spring 2016 jewelry campaign

EMILY RATAJKOWSKI STRIPS DOWN FOR NEW JEWELRY CAMPAIGN

Published on March 21, 2016

Emily Ratajkowski poses topless for Jacquie Aiche’s spring 2016 jewelry campaign

Emily Ratajkowski models jewelry by stripping down for LA-based label Jacquie Aiche’s new campaign. The brunette stunner wears looks from the spring 2016 collection including layering necklaces, stacked rings and glittering earrings. Emily goes topless, showing off her buxom figure in addition to casual tanks, utility jackets and knitted sweaters. The jewelry collection includes metal chains, opals, turquoise and other precious gemstones.

Tanino Liberatore / Women IV

Tanino Liberatore

WOMEN IV

Flannery O’Connor / A Good Man Is Hard To Find

A Good Man Is Hard To Find

by Flannery O’Connor

Flannery O’Connor / Un hombre bueno es difícil de encontrar

The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennes- see and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey's mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. "Now look here, Bailey," she said, "see here, read this," and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. "Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read here what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn't take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn't answer to my conscience if I did."

Diane Keaton / 'I've played around with all different kinds of men'

Diane Keaton: 'I've played around with all different kinds of men'

The ever stylish Diane Keaton talks to Stella about her new role in Hampstead CREDIT:MARK ABRAHAMS 

•  Kate Finnigan, fashion features director 

17 JUNE 2017 • 7:00AM

Forty-five years after The Godfather, 40 years after Annie Hall, and Diane Keaton, aged 71, Academy Award-winner, comedy genius, style icon and everyone’s sweetheart, is giving me a private audience in the suite of a hotel in central London.

Some Venezuelans find a way to use devalued money that is now just paper.
Photograph: Juancho Torres

Life's a struggle as Venezuela inflation heads for one million per cent

The IMF has drastically upped its inflation prediction, with people unable to afford food and medicine – even as Nicolás Maduro tightens his grip on power

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá and María Ramírez 

in Ciudad Guayana
Wed 25 Jul 2018

T

wo years ago, shoppers in Venezuela would pay fruit sellers like José Pacheco with boxfuls of 100 bolívar notes – then the currency’s highest denomination. Now, thanks to rampant hyperinflation, even those are useless.

“It’s crazy to accept notes of 100, 500, or 1,000 bolivares,” said Pacheco, a wiry 61-year-old, whose humble stall clings to the fringe of one of the major markets in Ciudad Guayana, a city in Venezuela’s southern Bolívar state.

Venezuela: children of the crisis

'It's a pain you will never overcome': crisis in Venezuela as babies die of malnutrition

As Venezuela enters its seventh year of a crushing depression, doctors are seeing a rise in infant mortality rates due to deprivation

by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in El Callao

Wed 12 February 2020

Her coffin was little larger than a shoe box. Her life had lasted three short months.

“She was a calm little thing,” the girl’s grandmother, Yamilet Zerpa, remembered as mourners filed into her sitting room to say their last goodbyes.

On a table before them lay a small white casket lined with sky blue cloth. Inside was Yaretzi López Pinto: born 14 October 2019, declared dead on Thursday 16 January this year.

Morticians had folded Yaretzi’s delicate hands over her chest and placed a pink flower on her fingers. Minnie Mouse smiled up from her dress beside the word: “Sweetheart”.

Child in hospital
Barquisimeto, Venezuela

'All we have are walls': crisis leaves Venezuela’s schools crumbling

Schools across the country in dire straits as teachers abandon the profession or skip the country amid one of the worst economic downturns in modern history

by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in El Palmar

Saturday 15 February 2020

There are 723 pupils at the José Eduardo Sánchez Afanador school but no electricity, no computers, no tables and no chairs.

The windows lack glass, the toilets have lost their sinks and its metal classroom doors have been plundered by thieves, allowing pigeons to colonize several of the filthy spaces.

Children of the crisis / A million children left behind as Venezuela crisis tears families apart

Nicolás Maduro

Venezuela: children of the crisis

A million children left behind as Venezuela crisis tears families apart

As the country battles economic collapse, parents have been forced to migrate, leaving their offspring in the care of family, neighbours or sometimes alone

by Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel in Ciudad Guayana

Thu 20 February 2020

It has been four months since Isabel Carrasco skipped her crumbling country, entrusting her daughters to a neighbour to join modern South America’s largest ever exodus.

Carrasco’s destination was Guyana, although the woman now raising her children isn’t sure which part.

Her mission: to earn enough money to help her children back in Venezuela survive its economic collapse.

• 

IVAN ILYCH: THE TRAGEDY OF AN UNEXAMINED LIFE

by Robin Gretz

Each of us one day will face illness and death. Yet rarely do we consider whether the choices we make in life can help us face suffering and death with courage and dignity. The Death of Ivan Ilych, by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, is the story of a dying man’s struggle to come to terms with the meaning of his life, even as he endures an agonizing death. It is a powerful novel that raises disturbing questions about moral choice, the importance of being treated as a person rather than a patient, and the life-sustaining value of family and friends. This essay examines one man’s suffering and dying in a way that suggests that the choices we make during our lives have much to do with the kind of death we will experience.

When a man dies, he does not just die of the
disease he has: he dies of his whole life.
—Charles Peguy

Occasionally, a novel or story touches us indelibly, leading to the realization that we can never again look at our life in quite the same way. For me, The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy is such a book. For those who have known death, either personally or professionally, or for those who find in literature clues to the diversity of human experience, this story is a valuable pathway to asking whether the choices we make in life can help us face death with courage and dignity.

Jennifer Love Hewiit / Red

Jennifer Love Hewitt

RED