Anthony Burgess Quotes

This truth may be handled either sinfully or profitably; sinfully as when it is treated on only to satisfy curiosity, and to keep up a mere barren speculative dispute ... This point of election ... is not to be agitated in a verbal and contentious way, but in a saving way, to make us tremble and to set us upon a more diligent and close striving with God in prayer, and all other duties. ~ Anthony Burgess

It's a stinking world because it lets the young get on to the old like you done, and there's no law nor order no more. ~ Anthony Burgess

It is not the novelist's job to preach; it is his duty to show. ~ Anthony Burgess

And what, brothers, I had to escape into sleep from then was the horrible and wrong feeling that it was better to get the hit than give it. If that veck had stayed I might even have like presented the other cheek. ~ Anthony Burgess

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. ~ Anthony Burgess

Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: 'Oh. And what's stinking about it? ~ Anthony Burgess

A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey. ~ Anthony Burgess

He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child. ~ Anthony Burgess

Then we slooshied. ~ Anthony Burgess

As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God; though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties. ~ Anthony Burgess

I was eighteen now, just gone. Eighteen was not a young age. At eighteen old Wolfgang Amadeus had written concertos and symphonies and operas and oratorios and all that cal, no, not cal, heavenly music. And then there was old Felix M. with his "Midsummer Night's Dream" Overture. And there were others. And there was this like French poet set by old Benjy Britt, who had done all his best poetry by the age of fifteen, O my brothers. Arthur, his first name. Eighteen was not all that young an age then. But what was I going to do? ~ Anthony Burgess

Every dogma has its day. ~ Anthony Burgess

John Kenneth Galbraith and Marshall McLuhan are the two greatest modern Canadians that the U.S. has produced. ~ Anthony Burgess

As for the new world war that's waiting in the womb of time, a healthily developed foetus, who can say what will spark it, how destructive it will be? We've already played at this war in film and fiction, indicating that there's a part of us that desperately wants it. What nonsense writers and filmmakers talk when they say that their terrible visions are meant as a warning. [ ... ] It's sheer wish fulfillment. War ... is a culture pattern. It's a legitimate mode of cultural transmission ... ~ Anthony Burgess

It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness. ~ Anthony Burgess

A flip dark chill winter bastard though dry ~ Anthony Burgess

The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed: that is one of the most abiding of human satisfaction. ~ Anthony Burgess

And so I hunger for something that is permanent, something that will last forever. Truth, I am told, is a thing that will last forever. ~ Anthony Burgess

And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all. ~ Anthony Burgess

Writers are rarely their own best critics, nor are critics. ~ Anthony Burgess

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs ~ Anthony Burgess

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

I am everyone's friend,'I said.'Except to my enemies. ~ Anthony Burgess

One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going. ~ Anthony Burgess

A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although ... he may be permitted to be an intellectual. ~ Anthony Burgess

There is the devastatingly simple, yet profound, moral dilemma, which underlies the book: is it better for a man to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good? ~ Anthony Burgess

If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed. ~ Anthony Burgess

In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive. ~ Anthony Burgess

When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man. ~ Anthony Burgess

...the whatness of Allbook. ~ Anthony Burgess

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. ~ Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange is too didactic to be artistic. It is not the novelist's job to preach; it is his job to show. ~ Anthony Burgess

There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. ~ Anthony Burgess

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. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

In other words, I heard life going on, and it was a comfort. ~ Anthony Burgess

I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing. ~ Anthony Burgess

Destruction, best expressed in this age in which I write as terrorism, is truly there for its own sake, but the pretense of religion or secular patriotism converts the destructive into the speciously creative. ~ Anthony Burgess

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. ~ Anthony Burgess

The state is never so efficient as when it wants money. ~ Anthony Burgess

Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely. ~ Anthony Burgess

Odorous as a crateful of bad eggs with the miasma of original sin. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

Fumbling for a word is everybody's birthright. ~ Anthony Burgess

If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not. ~ Anthony Burgess

It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. ~ Anthony Burgess

The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world. ~ Anthony Burgess

It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen. ~ Anthony Burgess

The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets threewise silverflamed, ~ Anthony Burgess

Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou. ~ Anthony Burgess

Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose. ~ Anthony Burgess

Bedways is rightways now, so best we go homeways. ~ Anthony Burgess

And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight. ~ Anthony Burgess

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? ~ Anthony Burgess

The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school. ~ Anthony Burgess

Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself ... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice. ~ Anthony Burgess

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the CAUSE of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into what is the cause of GOODNESS, so why of the other shop? ~ Anthony Burgess

Literature is all, or mostly, about sex. ~ Anthony Burgess

like candy thunder. Oh, ~ Anthony Burgess

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

Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book ... I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist. ~ Anthony Burgess

You were not put on this Earth just to get in touch with god ~ Anthony Burgess

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

Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000. ~ Anthony Burgess

That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes.
But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning young earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lipmusic brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that call. ~ Anthony Burgess

But in a sense, destruction is a means of creation. When a vandal knoecks in the side of a telephone booth, or scratches his name on the side of a subway car, he is leaving his mark. He is, whether he knows it or not, attempting to show that he exists and that he has the ability to affect things, and to change things. Destructive violence is a way of saying, 'Look, I am here.' That's the easy way. That's negative creation. Positive creation is much more difficult - it requires patience and talent. ~ Anthony Burgess

When we pray we admit defeat. ~ Anthony Burgess

Well, if they would not go to school they must still have their education. And education they had had. ~ Anthony Burgess

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. ~ Anthony Burgess

All novels are experimental. ~ Anthony Burgess

I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

The human liver, unless it is Graham Greene's, can take so much and no more. ~ Anthony Burgess

Being young's a sort of sickness,
Measles, mumps or chicken pox.
Gather all your toys together,
Lock them in a wooden box.
That means tolchocks, crasting and dratsing,
All of the things that suit a boy.
When you build instead of busting,
You can start your Ode to Joy.
Do not be a clockwork orange,
Freedom has a lovely voice.
Here is good and there is badness,
Look on both, then take your choice.
Sweet in juice and hue and aroma,
Let's not be changed to fruit machines.
Choice is free but seldom easy-
That's what human freedom means. ~ Anthony Burgess

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. ~ Anthony Burgess

Ah, 6655321, think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy.' And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him, and then he went off to his little cantora to peet some more. So I read all about the scourging and the crowning with thorns and then the cross veshch and all that cal, and I viddied better that there was something in it. While the stereo played bits of lovely Bach I closed my glazzies and viddied myself helping in and even taking charge of the tolchocking and the nailing in, being dressed in a like toga that was the heighth of Roman fashion. So being in Staja 84F was not all that wasted, and the Governor himself was very pleased to hear that I had taken to like Religion, and that was where I had my hopes. ~ Anthony Burgess

Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets. ~ Anthony Burgess

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil. ~ Anthony Burgess

Oh, I'm dying,' I like moaned. 'Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh.' 'Appendy shitehouse,' grumbled this veck. ~ Anthony Burgess

Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones ... you are invited! ~ Anthony Burgess

What's it going to be then, eh? ~ Anthony Burgess

Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes. ~ Anthony Burgess

It stands to reason you've got to have a war. Not because anybody wants it, of course, but because there's an army. An army here and an army there and armies all over the shop. Armies is for wars and wars is for armies. That's only plain common sense.'
'War's finished,' said Tristram. 'War's outlawed. There hasn't been any war for years and years and years.'
'All the more reason why there's got to be a war,' said the driver, 'if we've been such a long time without one. ~ Anthony Burgess

So if I get loveted and it's three months in this mesto and another six in that, and then, as P. R. Deltoid so kindly warns, next time, in spite of the great tenderness of my summers, brothers, it's the great unearthly zoo itself, well, I say, 'Fair, but a pity, my lords, because I just cannot bear to be shut in. My endeavour shall be, in such future as stretches out its snowy and lilywhite arms to me before the nozh overtakes or the blood spatters its final chorus in twisted metal and smashed glass on the highroad, to not get loveted again. ~ Anthony Burgess

Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines. ~ Anthony Burgess

As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused. ~ Anthony Burgess

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

And then, before he told me, I knew what it was. The old ptitsa who had
all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world in one of the city
hospitals. I'd cracked her a bit too hard, like. Well, well, that was
everything. I thought of all those kots and koshkas mewling for moloko and
getting none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress. That was
everything. I'd done the lot, now and me still only fifteen. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

Goodbye, goodbye, may Bog forgive you for a ruined life. Then I got on to the sill, the music blasting away to my left, and I shut my glazzies and felt the cold wind on my listo, then I jumped. ~ Anthony Burgess

To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art. ~ Anthony Burgess

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

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

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

Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you enuch jelly, thou ~ Anthony Burgess

Translation is not a matter of words only; it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture. ~ Anthony Burgess

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