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
novelist permitted
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although. . . he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
creators great
The downtrodden, who are the great creators of slang.
modern-youth down-and great-music
Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.
alex
Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.
kissing profound lips
And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.
civilised
Civilised my syphilised yarbles.
orange evil lovely
If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.
somewhere-else ghost life-is
All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
imagination records language
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
abiding behaviour likes
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. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed; that is one of the most abiding of human satisfaction.
erotic england sisterly
I've always felt that English women had to be approached in a sisterly manner, rather than an erotic manner.
opposites moral life-is
Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
rome cities belief
Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.
agents literature cottages
With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.