Time's Arrow Quotes

“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

“Probably human cruelty is fixed and eternal. Only styles change.”
― Martin Amis , Time's Arrow

“They're always looking forward to going places they're just coming back from, or regretting doing things they haven't yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“So I am lonely, but not alone, like everybody else.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Her body is probably naked by now but there is nothing as naked as human eyes: they haven't even got skin over them.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Like writing, paintings seem to hint at a topsy-turvy world in which, so to speak, time’s arrow moves the other way.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Maybe love will be like driving. When people move—when they travel—they look where they’ve come from, not where they’re going.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“How many times have I asked myself: when is the world going to start making sense? Yet the answer is out there. It is rushing towards me over the uneven ground.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Time, the human dimension, which makes us everything we are.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Blood and bodies and death and power.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Beneath the clock was an enormous arrow, on which was printed: Change Here For Eastern Trains. But time had no arrow, not here.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“He turns the pages from right to left. He begins at the beginning and ends at the end. This makes a quirky sense to me—but Mikio and I are definitely in the minority here. And how can we two be right? It would make so many others wrong. Water moves upward. It seeks the highest level. What did you expect? Smoke falls. Things are created in the violence of fire. But that’s all right. Gravity still pins us to the planet.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Is it a war we are fighting, a war against health, against life and love? My condition is a torn condition. Every day, the dispensing of existence. I see the face of suffering. Its face is fierce and distant and ancient.
There's probably a straightforward explanation for the impossible weariness I feel. A perfectly straightforward explanation. It is a mortal weariness. Maybe I'm tired of being human, if human is what I am. I'm tired of being human.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Evidentemente è questa la caratteristica della città contemporanea. Puoi aver voglia di lavorarci. Ma nessuno si aspetta seriamente che tu ci viva.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“To remember a day would take a day. To remember a year would take a year.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Senza mai guardare dove sta andando, la gente si muove attraverso qualcosa di predisposto, armata di bugie. Non vede l'ora di raggiungere luoghi dai quali è appena tornata, o si rammarica di aver fatto cose che non ha ancora fatto. Signori delle bugie e della spazzatura - di ogni sorta di merda e di spazzatura.

[...]

Lo prendiamo ancora in culo ogni mattina come tutti gli altri - ma in questi giorni la cosa finisce in un baleno.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Dove saremmo Tod e io senza il gabinetto? Dove saremmo senza tutta la spazzatura?”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“It’s all strange to me. I know I live on a fierce and magical planet, which sheds or surrenders rain or even flings it off in whipstroke after whipstroke, which fires out bolts of electric gold into the firmament at 186,000 miles per second, which with a single shrug of its tectonic plates can erect a city in half an hour. Creation … is easy, is quick. There’s also a universe, apparently. But I cannot bear to see the stars, even though I know they’re there all right, and I do see them, because Tod looks upward at night, as everybody does, and coos and points. The Plough. Sirius, the dog. The stars, to me, are like pins and needles, are like the routemap of a nightmare. Don’t join the dots.… Of the stars, one alone can I contemplate without pain. And that’s a planet. The planet they call the evening star, the morning star. Intense Venus.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“No longer can I bear with the ruined god, betrayed and beaten by his own magic. Calling on powers best left unsummoned, he took human beings apart—and then he put them back together again.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“This photograph, this swipe of grain, so briefly glimpsed: I could tell it contained extraordinary information. It was black and white. It was about power. Twelve men were depicted there, in unmistakable configuration. Twelve men, but two distinct human types, equally represented, six of one type, half a dozen of the other. The first type had power, and safety in numbers. The second type had no power-had numbers, but no safety: numbers conferred only grief and weakness. The first type was silently saying something to the second type. Six men were saying to the other six: Whatever else divides us, whatever else is between us, only one thing matters. We belong to the living, you to the dead. We are the living and you are the dead. The dead.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Что за правила здесь? Почему птицы поют так странно? Куда я направляюсь?”
― Мартин Эмис, Стрела времени, или Природа преступления

“It’s a funny language, German. For one thing, everybody shouts it.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Well, we cry and twist and are naked at both ends of life. We cry at both ends of life, while the doctor watches.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Она законно пользуется широкой известностью за свои умелые руки, жаркие бедра, мягкие губы, красивый живот, частую оторопь и редкую злоебучесть.”
― Мартин Эмис, Стрела времени, или Природа преступления

“Город исцелит их лезвием ножа, автомобилем, полицейской дубинкой, пулей. Локальные вспышки любви и ненависти. Оборванные кабели и порушенная кладка телекинетического города.”
― Мартин Эмис, Стрела времени, или Природа преступления

“La città - è la città che dovrà guarirli, con lame di coltello e automobili, manganelli, colpi d'arma da fuoco. I cavi allentati e le pericolose costruzioni in muratura della città telecinetica.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Here’s another joke: “She calls me up and says, ‘Get over here. There’s nobody home.’ So I get over there, and guess what. There’s nobody home.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“We’re nowhere near young enough for the present war, but when the world war comes—we’ll be just right to fight it. We are, after all, a superb physical specimen. Our feet aren’t flat. Our vision is clear. We’re not clubfooted or Marxist or nuts. We have no conscientious objections or anything of that kind. We’re perfect.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“Everybody dreams about being harmed. It’s easy. Much tougher to recover from the dream of harming…”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow

“I have to say that the situation didn't look very promising. There was a woman in the bed right enough. But there was a man there too. Fully clothed, enormous in midnight-blue serge suit and peaked cap, he knelt above her rhythmically slapping her face with a pendulum action of his heavy-gloved hand. No, this didn't look like our kind of thing at all. Warily John slipped out of his socks and shirt. You have to give him credit: he keeps his cool and works the percentages. Now the two mean moved strangely past each other; and with some diffidence John climbed into bed. The other guy stared at us, with raised, with churning face. Then he did some shouting and strode out of there - though he paused, and thoughtfully dimmed the lights, as he left the room. We heard his boots on the stairs. The lady clutched me.

"My husband!" she explained.”
― Martin Amis, Time's Arrow