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Anthony Burgess

282 quotes

• “…he had to admit to a faint admiration (faint as angostura colouring gin and water)”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…workmen who wanted (a) the white man out…,(c) sinecures”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…Just you bloody hypocrites with your four wives and your ten thousand houris in heaven?…”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…Novello should be extremely grateful that his innubile daughter was being taken off his hands by a Tasca.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…My name…is Mahalingam….is Sanskrit for ‘large or great or mighty generative organ’ - this, of course, having more a religious (through associations of religion and fertility) significance than an anatomical one. Though anatomically and…socially the name has not proved inept.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “… ‘I’ve only one hobby, and that is my wife.’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I suppose the only real reason for travelling is to learn that all people are the same.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “England become a feeble-lighted Moon of America…”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'What's it going to be then, eh?'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days, and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There was no real need...of crasting any more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till’s guts.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “That’s what it’s going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush, though they were hard bastards like. . . . The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms — “wuf waf wof” — so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They saw themselves, you could see, as real grown-up devotchkas already, what with the old hipswing when they saw your Faithful Narrator, brothers, and padded groodies and red all ploshed on their goobers....They viddied themselves as real sophistoes....They had the same ideas or lack of, and the same colour hair — a like dyed strawy. Well, they would grow up real today....No school this afterlunch, but education certain, Alex as teacher.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penological theories....Common criminals...can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that’s all.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Now we were the very good malchicks, smiling good evensong to one and all, though these wrinkled old lighters started to get all shook, their veiny old rookers all trembling round their glasses, and making the suds spill on the table. 'Leave us be, lads,' said one of them, her face all mappy with being a thousand years old, 'we’re only poor old women.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva. And there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement still to come. I was cured all right.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'My darling one....I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out at night.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There was Your Humble Narrator Alex coming home from work to a good hot plate of dinner, and there was this ptitsa all welcoming and greeting like loving....I had this sudden very strong idea that if I walked into the room next to this room where the fire was burning away and my hot dinner laid on the table, there I should find what I really wanted....For in that other room in a cot was laying gurgling goo goo goo my son....I knew what was happening, O my brothers. I was like growing up.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[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.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 [things] I had done...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.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It's sapiens to be homo.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'Brutality!' cried Tristam. The class was at last interested. 'Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging out of eyes. The firing squad in the cold dawn. And all this because of disappointment. The Interphase.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘…I prefer to think of [young women] less as human beings than as pimply parcels of televisual reflexes.’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘So she was Greek, was she?’ said Sir Benjamin. ‘Well, well. I suppose the new vice laws are driving some of them out of Soho. Driving them down here,’ he said, as though a whole new world were opening up. ‘Well.’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘She is a goddess,’ said Ambrose, drunkenly and stoutly. ‘…And she wants me. She’s the pursuer…She’s the epitome of woman, not,’ he said, ‘not a second-hand bundle of coy erogeneity draped,’ he said, ‘in an all-too-diaphanous robe,’ he said, ‘of pudeur.’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘…today’s…newspapers…full of…diminishing exports, the unkillable widening grin of the pullulating East, the expanding machine of the almighty infallible State….He himself could only turn to the past, but he heard that it was already possible to change the past, bringing the past perpetually up to date, a perpetual jackal fawning on the present, a malleable witness with no qualms about perjury. He knew that the armies were on the march, the Tannoys blaring, the collective mind – tool of oligarchy – being fashioned under the anaesthetic of the catchphrase and the mass entertainment...’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It was all a matter of a Goddess – dark, hidden, deadly, horribly desirable.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There he lieth, tossing in the guilt of his lewdness, the primal lecher, neglectful of his duties to a fair wife but all too ready to plunge his sizzling steel into the slaking black mud of a base Indian.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The West is eveningland, the East morningland.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…my two chronic diseases of gluttony and satyriasis…”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…the cold deflation of crapula…”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…British louts with guitars and emetic little songs…infantile screamers…”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “‘…you read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies….’”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “…enjoyed Dravidian transports.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The scientific approach to life is not necessarily appropriate to states of visceral anguish.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In the name of Allah the all-powerful, all-merciful, all-knowing, know that it is by his holy will that we come to free the peoples of the Nile from their immemorial and most cruel bondage to the Turks and the Mamelukes, free men of Frankistan bringing freedom, respecting Islam and the tenets of the holy prophet, may his name be praised and the holy name of Allah most high exalted for ever more.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “They could hardly believe it, the retreating arses of all that Mameluke or Turkish cavalry, heathen anyway, crying heathen words as they cantered off in gunsnioke and dust-clouds, dropping spears and jewels and good Birmingham pistols. And soon it was water water water, a world of blessed water, the muddy stinking welcoming mother Nile near Rahmaniya.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'Like a great big meaty stew,' Gallimard of the 32nd kept saying. In the sauce-coloured Nile blown corpses floated gently seaward, to be fished out with bent bayonets. There were good pickings here, since each Mameluke carried his gold about him. On the shore lay ornate pommels, daggers, pistols, all encrusted with pearl and jewels, worth a fucking fortune....he started to harpoon out a sogged and bloated dreaming Mameluke or Turk or whatever he was. 'Poor bugger's in paradise now, drinking sherbet, poor bugger.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “...like a ship, clean and trim on a dirty sea of pox and camel-dung.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Legrand scratched his cheek with one of Conté's lead pencils and started to Koranize: I say unto you that you have been brought low by kings who lie with houris on the fat sofas of Stamboul and by those that were once among you and came from lands of the sunset, men pale but warlike, to steal your camels and women and snatch the bread from your teeth, in no wise to raise you high among the peoples of the earth. Meanwhile the C-in-C got on with other things - gunpowder factory, street-lighting, Paris-style café, accommodation for laundresses, a balloon demonstration.”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Imams and muftis and kathis sat here on cushions, turbaned elders who had risen above the squalor of the flesh. The heat was tamed by wide-eyed boys with feathery fans. One of the muftis much admired one of these boys, and he stroked his buttocks with a gentle hand. The smell of the holy was wafted towards entering Bonaparte, who said with care:”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'We believe in Allah, we take the Koran as a sacred book. In our land we broke the power of infidel Rum, in his own land we struck down her Sultan whom men called the Pope, in Malta we slew the Knights, sworn enemies of Islam. Inform your people that we are sent by Allah to geld the evil Turk and raise high the people of the Nile.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'How can slaves be sent by Allah? You all have hairless faces, the mark of the bondman.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'You drink wine, you have foreskins. These things have been observed.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'It was not seemly to raise your flags on the minarets.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'As for your circumcisions, the chief modin can arrange all. Your wine must return to the earth, whence the grape came. Haram.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “'Yes yes yes, later. For now I would ask you to proclaim next Friday from the mimbar in the masjid that the French are protectors of the faith and friends of the Prophet.'”

  Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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