Anthony Burgess Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Uplifting, Philosophy, Literature

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “The Kingdom of the Wicked”, p.4, Allison & Busby

  26 Copy quote

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

  Anthony Burgess

  Life, Real, Color

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• But what I do I do because I like to do.

  Anthony Burgess

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.46, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Believe, Unforgivable Sin, Doe

  Anthony Burgess (1971). “The Novel To-day”

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

  Anthony Burgess

  Practice, Ideas, Fiction

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

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• We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Fearless, Clockwork

  Anthony Burgess (2011). “A Clockwork Orange”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.

  Anthony Burgess

  America, Victory, Democracy

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• To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

  Anthony Burgess

  Easier, Spectacular

  Anthony Burgess (2011). “A Clockwork Orange”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science.

  Anthony Burgess

  Education, Art, Two

  "English Literature: A Survey for Students". Book by Anthony Burgess, 1958.

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• We only need to wear shoes because the British built roads which hurt our feet.

  Anthony Burgess

  Funny, Hurt, Shoes

  Anthony Burgess (1959). “Malayan Trilogy: Time for a Tiger. The Enemy in the Blanket; Beds in the East”

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• We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation.

  Anthony Burgess

  Money, Degrees, Needs

  54 Copy quote

• Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?

  Anthony Burgess

  Men, Evil, Dystopia

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• A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Attitude, Men

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• The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Catholic, Musician

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• Death comes along like a gas bill one can't pay.

  Anthony Burgess

  Pay, Bills, Gas

  1974 Interview in Playboy.

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• When the State withers, humanity flowers.

  Anthony Burgess

  Flower, Humanity, States

  Anthony Burgess (1996). “The Wanting Seed”, p.167, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I didn't think; I experimented.

  Anthony Burgess

  Science, Thinking, Action

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• 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

  Men, Merit, Doe

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• For the serious artist does not satisfy needs

  Anthony Burgess

  Artist, Doe, Needs

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• ... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '- The attempt to impose upon a man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen-

  Anthony Burgess

  Men, Orange, Law

  A Clockwork Orange (1962) p. 21

  20 Copy quote

• Life is, of course, terrible.

  Anthony Burgess

  Life Is, Terrible, Courses

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• If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Effort, Musical

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “But Do Blondes Prefer Gentlemen?: Homage to Qwert Yuiop, and Other Writings”, New York : McGraw-Hill

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• 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. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Character, People

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• Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.

  Anthony Burgess

  Witty, Italian, Simple

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “Homage to QWERT YUIOP: essays”, Vintage

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• 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

  Sex, Writing, Fiction

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