Anthony Burgess Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

  Interesting, Choices, Relief

  Anthony Burgess (1996). “The Wanting Seed”, p.234, W. W. Norton & Company

  5 Copy quote

• Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.

  Anthony Burgess

  Spit

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

  5 Copy quote

• The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.

  Anthony Burgess

  Wise, Brother, Wine

  9 Copy quote

• With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

  Anthony Burgess

  Cottages, Agents, Literature

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

  7 Copy quote

• Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Looks, Fiction

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

  8 Copy quote

• I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

  Anthony Burgess

  Clockwork

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.127, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

• Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.

  Anthony Burgess

  Life Is, Wells, Bits

  Anthony Burgess (1980). “Earthly powers”, Simon & Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. 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? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.

  Anthony Burgess

  Nice, Night, Men

  4 Copy quote

• If you expect the worst from a person, you can't ever be disappointed... The pessimist takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink. 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

  Depth, Abiding, Behaviour

  "The Wanting Seed".

  6 Copy quote

• The essence of pop stardom is immaturity - a wretched little pseudo-musical gift, a development of the capacity to shock, a short-lived notoriety, extreme depression, a yielding to the suicidal impulse.

  Anthony Burgess

  Suicidal, Essence, Musical

  6 Copy quote

• I think art is sublimated libido. You can’t be a eunuch priest, and you can’t be a eunuch artist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Thinking, Priests

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.59, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

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

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Behinds, Has Beens

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.46, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  4 Copy quote

• Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

  Anthony Burgess

  Opposites, Moral, Life Is

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

  8 Copy quote

• A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Character, Past, Chess Pieces

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

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Life, Retirement, Peace

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

  9 Copy quote

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

  Anthony Burgess

  Two, Modern, Kenneth

  6 Copy quote

• Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.

  Anthony Burgess

  Pain, Sleep, Forever

  "A Clockwork Orange". Book by Anthony Burgess, 1962.

  8 Copy quote

• All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.

  Anthony Burgess

  Life, Somewhere Else, Atheism

  7 Copy quote

• You have no idea how pleasant it is not to have any future. It's like having a totally efficient contraceptive.

  Anthony Burgess

  Future, Ideas, Pleasant

  Anthony Burgess (2013). “Honey for the Bears”, p.187, W. W. Norton & Company

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, Healthy, Get Better

  Anthony Burgess (2011). “A Clockwork Orange”, p.117, Penguin UK

  7 Copy quote

• Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thou 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

  Art, Boys, Oil

  "A Clockwork Orange". Book by Anthony Burgess, 1962.

  9 Copy quote

• Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Ignorance, Stupidity

  6 Copy quote

• Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance.

  Anthony Burgess

  World, Violence, Life Is

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.126, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Baths, Cleanliness, Week

  1963 Inside Mr Enderby, pt.2, ch.1.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Morning, Brother, Real

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.41, W. W. Norton & Company

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