Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers Quotes

I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.

People don't want to know. They have to be made to know. Whether they act on what they know is up to them. But they have to know.

In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.

There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.

The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet.

A man who serves language, however imperfectly, should always serve truth.

I can't accept that a work of fiction should be either immoral or moral. It should merely show the world as it is and have no moral bias.

Man does not ask for nightmares, he does not ask to be bad. He does not will his own willfulness.

...I expected a gift, you know, something nice and useless...