when the sky is as grey as this - impeccably grey, a denial, really of the very concept of colour - and the stooped millions lift their heads, it's hard to tell the air from the impurities in our human eyes, as if the sinking climbing paisley curlicues of grit were part of the element itself, rain, spores, tears, film, dirt. Perhaps, at such moments, the sky is no more then the sum of the dirt that lives in our human eyes.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on perception and the relationship between the natural world and human experience.
In this quote, Martin Amis contemplates the bleakness of a grey sky and how it blends with the imperfections in human perception. He suggests that the way we see the world is tainted by our own experiences and emotions, highlighting the idea that our understanding of reality is influenced by our subjective viewpoint. The air and the 'impurities in our human eyes' merge, suggesting that our perception of beauty and color may be distorted by our own flaws and the world's harsh reality.
In practice
In a discussion about how our emotions affect our view of the world.
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.
Sometimes I feel that life is passing me by, not slowly either, but with ropes of steam and spark - spattered wheels and a hoarse roar of power or terror. It's passing, yet I'm the one who's doing all the moving.
You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other's otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full *contact* - all that?
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
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.
Jane was my wicked stepmother: she was generous, affectionate and resourceful; she salvaged my schooling and I owe her an unknowable debt for that. One flaw: sometimes, early on, she would tell me things designed to make me think less of my mother, and I would wave her away, saying, Jane, this just backfires and makes me think less of you.
If you blame others for something that happens in your life, then you must wait until they change in order to get better.
Oddly, I feel more protected when I write in Italian, even though I'm also more exposed.
My feeling is that the hero has now been defined by phrases like the odious one that we were all raised with - crimes does not pay. Of course it pays, you schmuck. That's not why we don't do it. We don't do it because it is wrong.
If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian.
Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death Perhaps the world can teach us as when everything seems dead but later proves to be alive.
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