Anthony Burgess Quotes

The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.

A word in a dictionary is very much like a car in a mammoth motor show - full of potential but temporarily inactive.

Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.

I was cured all right.

And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.

I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.

As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.

Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.

How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.

Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned.

What's it going to be then, eh?

If I had died it would have been even better for you political bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are.' But all that came out was er er er.

This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.

I have heard earnest American sociologists say that American children have a right to the divorce experience as an enriching element of an advanced civilisation.

When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.

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.

You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.

You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.

Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.

The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.

And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.

When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.

And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.

What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right.

The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?

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

Dreams go by opposites I was once told.

The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.

A work of art is somehow organic, and to slash a painting or smash a statue is not just an offence against property: it is an offence against life.

I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.

What sort of world is it at all? Men on the moon and men spinning round the earth like it might be midges round a lamp, and there's not no attention paid to earthly law nor order no more.

The heresy of an age of reason, ' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

You're a romantic, ” said Crabbe. “You expect too much. Reality's always dull, you know, but when we see that it's all there is, well-it miraculously ceases to be dull.

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

Oh? And what's so stinking about it?.

Literature is the aesthetic exploitation of language

There was no trust anywhere in the world, O my brothers, the way I could see it.

You were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God.

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

Feeling very surprised too at myself. I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.

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

Then there was like quiet and we were full of like hate, so smashed what was left to be smashed.

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.

We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.

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...

The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penelogical theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens, You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of punishment.

The old days are dead and gone days. For what I did in the past I have been punished. I have been cured.

That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.