Anthony Burgess Quotes

The downtrodden who are the great creators of slang hurl pithiness and colour at poverty and oppression.

So we got hold of him and cracked him with a few good horrorshow tolchocks, but he still went on singing.

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

To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

The danger of memory is that it can turn anyone into a prophet.

A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.

A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.