Anthony Burgess > Quotes

“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”
― Anthony Burgess

“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”
― Anthony Burgess, Homage To Qwert Yuiop: Essays

“But what I do I do because I like to do.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Each man kills the thing he loves.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“What's it going to be then, eh?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.”
― Anthony Burgess

“If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed

“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.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”
― Anthony Burgess

“The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions, when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.”
― Anthony Burgess

“It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. ”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.”
― Anthony Burgess

“Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange