Anthony Burgess Quotes
This damnable sex, boys - ah, you do well to writhe in your beds at the very mention of the word. All the evil of our modern times springs from unholy lust, the act of the dog and the bitch on the bouncing bed, limbs going like traction engines, the divine gift of articulate speech diminished to squeals and groans and pantings. It is terrible, terrible, an abomination before God and His Holy Mother. Lust is the fount of all other of the deadly sins, leading to pride of the flesh, covetousness of the flesh, anger in the thwarting of desire, gluttony to feed the spent body to be at it again, envy of the sexual prowess and sexual success of others, sloth to admit enervating day-dreams of lust. Only in the married state, by Gods holy grace, is it sanctified, for then it becomes the means of begetting fresh souls for the peopling of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Anthony Burgess
Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned. The questioning of linguistic conventions is one of the main duties of what we call literature.
Anthony Burgess
Languages never stand still. Modern spelling crystallises lost pronunciations: the visual never quite catches up with the aural.
Anthony Burgess
[Graham Greenes] 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.
Anthony Burgess
My darling one....I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out at night.
Anthony Burgess
I suppose the only real reason for travelling is to learn that all people are the same.
Anthony Burgess
Howarth began to see that, however much it was against ones will and convictions, sides had to be taken, the dreary corrupt world of politics had to be entered by the good and dispassionate, to protect and avenge the weak. But one always entered too late.
Anthony Burgess
As I walked towards travel, that illusion of liberation, I strangely felt myself walking back into childhood.
Anthony Burgess
