I’ve noticed that whenever institutions claim to be confident of anything it means the complete opposite.

— Amanda Craig

Just about the worst thing an artist can do is to try and be a nice person.

— Amanda Craig

Mostly, what people mean by love is laziness.

— Amanda Craig

Novelists,’ said IPO, ‘are to the nineties what cooks were to the eighties, hairdressers to the seventies and pop-stars to the sixties… Merely, you know, an expression of the Zeitgeist, Nobody actually reads novels anymore, but it’s a fashionable thing to be a novelist – as long as you don’t entertain people of course. I sometimes think,’ said IPO, his eyes like industrial diamonds, ‘that my sole virtue is, I’m the only person in London who has no intention of writing any kind of novel, ever.

— Amanda Craig

Polly was all too aware that much of her time on holiday would be spent doing the laundry and the cooking and the child-care and all the other chores that back in London would be shared with her cleaning lady. A holiday with Theo and the children represented two weeks of domestic and maternal drudgery.

— Amanda Craig

Some people, perhaps those with more dignity and less rage gnawing at the roots of their being, are nicer as failures, For me, it was like descending a deep pit that had no bottom

— Amanda Craig

That is the worst thing about despair: it is not constant, any more than love is.

— Amanda Craig

The idea that any of their offspring could possibly be accused of involvement in criminal activities caused deep offense, even to parents who believed that property was theft.

— Amanda Craig

There was a certain usefulness in having a husband whom most people could barely tolerate: it deflected envy, for one thing.

— Amanda Craig

The sudden acquisition of power does not go to the head, but to the groin. In some, it promotes lust; in others, supplants it. Those on whom its effect is purely cerebral may indeed be counted as fortunate.

— Amanda Craig