Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, FRSL – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English writer and composer. From relatively modest beginnings in a Catholic family in Manchester, he eventually became one of the best known English literary figures of the latter half of the twentieth century...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 February 1917
Anthony Burgess quotes about
reading book substitutes
The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
mind afternoon awareness
The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon.
intelligent intelligence intellectual
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
slang downtrodden creator
The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.
lessons bogs ive-learned
You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured! I was cured alright.
uncles angel devil
Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!
solitude world modern
To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
broken-heart betrayal men
Each man kills the thing he loves.
clockwork
I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
colonialism reason colonization
Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?
law orange creation
laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.
brother spring animal
...youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.
human-nature nonsense
I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.
wine vegetables meals
The meal was pretentious - a kind of beetroot soup with greasy croutons; pork underdone with loud vulgar cabbage, potato croquettes, tinned peas in tiny jam-tart cases, watery gooseberry sauce; trifle made with a resinous wine, so jammy that all my teeth lit up at once.