Martin Amis: Nineteenth-century England was the time of our big novels

Nineteenth-century England was the time of our big novels, our centre-of-the-world novels, our time of imperial confidence. That has shifted to America and I cold-bloodedly and selfishly think, I want some of that. I want that attitude that is no longer appropriate to England.

—Martin Amis (1949–2023) in an interview with Christopher Bigsby, published in Writers in Conversation: Volume One (Norwich: EAS Publishing, 2000)

Cited in an article by Elaine Showalter in the New York Review of Books, 12 September 2008. I found several different versions of this quotation-- if you have the original, please let me know.