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.

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.

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 I had done, yes perhaps even killing some poor starry forella surrounded with mewing kots and koshkas, 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...