Anthony Burgess quotes - page 4

Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace. (Anthony Burgess)
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual. View quote
Anthony Burgess
He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The downtrodden are the great creators of slang. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange? View quote
Anthony Burgess
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 vonny 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 lip music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Power power, everybody like wants power. View quote
Anthony Burgess
My son, my son. When I had my son I would explain all that to him when he was starry enough to like understand. But then I knew he would not understand or would not want to understand at all and would do all the veshches [things] I had done...and I would not be able to really stop him. And nor would he be able to stop his own son, brothers. And so it would itty on to like the end of the world. View quote
Anthony Burgess
But what happens when you die?' 'You're finished with,' Enderby said promptly. 'Done for. And even if you weren't – well, you die then, gasp your last, then you're sort of wandering, free of body. You wander around and then you come in contact with a sort of big thing. What is this big thing? God, if you like. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man. (Anthony Burgess)
It is generally felt that the educated man or woman should be able to read Dante, Goethe, Baudelaire, Lorca in the original - with, anyway, the crutch of a translation. View quote
Anthony Burgess
It had, perhaps, not been a very edifying life. On the booze in England, in India, in Malaya... And then a couple of gins for breakfast and then the first beers of the day in a kedai ... He had been driven out of that Eden...because of his sinful desire to taste what was forbidden. View quote
Anthony Burgess
Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy. View quote
Anthony Burgess
If one does not wish to be dissatisfied with one's lot at home, one ought to go where the flies and the stinks are, which means the Middle East. This is also a good way of reconciling oneself to one's laws and police force and the probity of one's magistrates. The really great British travellers, like Charles M. Doughty for instance, to say nothing of ‘Eothen' Kinglake, always went East, but not too far East. When you get to Southeast Asia you find no dirt or flies but the suspicion that you are in a tropical paradise, and then you go to pieces. It is essential, when travelling, to feel that you belong to a superior civilization, and the lands of the Arabs lavishly grant opportunities to nourish this conviction.... View quote
Anthony Burgess
Everything off. I want to see you in your horrific potbellied hairy filthy nakedness. View quote
Anthony Burgess
...he had to admit to a faint admiration (faint as angostura colouring gin and water) View quote
Anthony Burgess
How can slaves be sent by Allah? You all have hairless faces, the mark of the bondman. View quote
Anthony Burgess
The Christian ecumenical movement will have reached its limit, meaning that Catholicism will have turned into Protestantism and Protestantism into agnosticism.... But Islam will not have lost any of its rigour.... Supernature abhors a supervacuum. With the death of institutional Christianity will come the spread of Islam. View quote
Anthony Burgess
...The senior Mr Denham's,' he said, with deadly Eastern realism, ‘will perhaps only be better in the grave. View quote
Anthony Burgess
But you like her, don't you?' asked Howarth. ‘You like Mrs Connor?' For himself, thought Howarth, he did not particularly like Mrs Connor. He desired Mrs Connor, however. (Anthony Burgess)
...all heroes and heroines trying to approximate, through barriers of pigmentation, to the Hebraico-Caucasian norm of Hollywood. View quote
Anthony Burgess
I come here to your beautiful country -' Mr Raj saw through the window bare branches, coil after coil of dirty clouds, washing on neighbour lines, forlorn pecking birds, a distant brace of gasometers. ‘- your beautiful country, I say,' he said defiantly. ‘...So far I have had mixed career. Fights and insults, complete lack of sexual sustenance - most necessary to men in prime of life - and inability to find accommodation commensurate with social position and academic attainments... View quote
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. View quote
Anthony Burgess
...jumped-up commercials pretending, too late, to be the ruling class.. View quote
Anthony Burgess