Anthony Burgess quotes - page 10

His heart beating faster, his throat drying, Nabby whispered to the driver, ‘Not so bloody fast.' ‘Tuan?' ‘All right, all right.' One of these days he must really get down to the language. There never seemed to be the time, somehow.... (Anthony Burgess)
The scientific approach to life is not necessarily appropriate to states of visceral anguish. View quote
Anthony Burgess
He forgot that the Malays revere cats and that the Chinese merely relish them. View quote
Anthony Burgess
What you could do with is a nice strong cup of tea, sir. I'll tell the kuki to make you one.' ‘Does it really do any good, Nabby? (That was better.) ‘I've tried every damn thing.'.... View quote
Anthony Burgess
From ancient drains and sewers of the language (maritime inns and brothels...), from scrawls in the catacombs...whoremasters' chapbooks...the vocabulary of tavern brawls. View quote
Anthony Burgess
"...My name...is Mahalingam.... is Sanskrit for ‘large or great or mighty generative organ' - this, of course, having more a religious (through associations of religion and fertility) significance than an anatomical one. Though anatomically and...socially the name has not proved inept. View quote
Anthony Burgess
...a fetid cabaret with a beer-bar, two houses of ill-fame disguised as coffee-shops... View quote
Anthony Burgess
...in the bar, he treated me and all around us to a loud recapitulation, based loosely on the visas and entry permits in his passport, of the more scandalous elements of our life together. ‘New York, dear, and that pissyarsed publisher of yours who tried to stop me going to the fistfuck party, dangerous he said, lethal, stupid sod. Toronto, that was where we had that little whatsit at the same time, remember, lovely kind of henna colour, half Indian, half French, not an ounce of bloody Anglosaxon blood remember.' He got drunk very rapidly on undiluted Pernod. ‘The man on the Washington Post who once had it off with a ghost. At the... View quote
Anthony Burgess
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me. View quote
Anthony Burgess
It was not seemly to raise your flags on the minarets. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Well-fed and liquored, I responded with ardour. (Anthony Burgess)
I decide that the East has definitely spoiled me for women. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil. View quote
Anthony Burgess
It was all a matter of a Goddess – dark, hidden, deadly, horribly desirable. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The dog now slept, occasionally farting very gently. View quote
Anthony Burgess
I take my title from the name the Jews have traditionally given the Roman Empire. You may expect to meet all manner of wickedness in what follows - pork-eating, lechery, adultery, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, the most ingenious varieties of cruelty, assassination, the worship of false gods and the sin of being uncircumcised. View quote
Anthony Burgess
...death came so easily, hardly announced, without apparent cause, often greeted with smiles. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Chickaks or geckos chirp on the walls.... View quote
Anthony Burgess
It began to worry me that I could never possibly settle in England now, not after Tokyo nude-shows and sliced green chillies, brown children sluicing at the road-pump, the air-conditioned hum in bedrooms big as ballrooms, negligible income-tax, curry tiffins, being the big man in the big car, the bars of all the airports of Africa and the East. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Ah, well, if they wanted their adultery, what did it matter to me? I hadn't much room to talk, anyway, with my five-pound prostitutes who did a bunk and the Japanese girls who cost far less and didn't do a bunk and whatever I was likely to pick up in Colombo. View quote
Anthony Burgess
We believe in Allah, we take the Koran as a sacred book. In our land we broke the power of infidel Rum, in his own land we struck down her Sultan whom men called the Pope, in Malta we slew the Knights, sworn enemies of Islam. Inform your people that we are sent by Allah to geld the evil Turk and raise high the people of the Nile. (Anthony Burgess)
The London office of the International Council for University Development was in Queen Street. Edwin hesitated outside, adjusting his cap, tightening the knot of his tie, smoothing his pyjama collar. The portals, a naked sculptural group above them emblematic of the Tutorial System, were designed to intimidate. The doors were all glass and hence appeared to be ever-open; this again must be emblematic of something. View quote
Anthony Burgess
[Graham Greene's] ability to encapsulate the essence of an exotic setting in a single book is exemplified in The Heart of the Matter (1948); his contemporary Evelyn Waugh stated that the West Africa of that book replaced the true remembered West Africa of his own experience. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The Antipods...were always ready to burst. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Oh, love, love, love - Love on a hilltop high, Love against a cloudless sky, Love where the scene is Painted by a million stars, Love with martinis In the cabarets and bars. Oh, love, love, love... View quote
Anthony Burgess