The Eve of St Venus Quotes

“But how can I make the Vicar feel, as I feel, that there's nothing malicious about this visitation? Why can't a goddess of love be a tangible aspect of the terrible, unknowable deity? Her personality, certainly, is rather more attractive than, say, that of St. Paul. I don't see why she shouldn't be canonised, now I come to think of it. Saint Venus.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus

“The eternal isn't any less eternal because a fallible mind conceives it. Divine revelation has to end up in the mind of a human receiver. In that sense we make our gods.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus

“The past, you see, is never discarded. The past is made richer by the unfolding present. The gods are still alive...”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus

“Blue eyes and blue heavens, kittens with blue ribbons.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus

“The past is dead, and all that was good is buried with it. And there's this thick horrible door of the present with its tantalising keyhole. You can press your eye or your ear to it, but you can't turn either into a key. The past goes on inside, that perpetual party, becoming wilder and wilder, but there's no admittance.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus

“Words are funny things... to a writer they're perhaps the only reality. The meaning doesn't count. You repeat a word to convince yourself it has meaning. You repeat it again and again till the meaning loses its meaning.”
― Anthony Burgess, The Eve of St Venus