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Anthony Burgess
282 quotes
“The Turks would do anything with a captured screaming infidel body - make it chew its own penis, thrust the testicles up the anus, saw the noseless earless head off with slow delicacy.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And then there were the sick to be transported back to Cairo (where already the holy war might have spread like the bubonic and smiling beards above gelder’s knives be waiting at the gates), and how in the name of filthy castrating Allah did you march men back through the Sinai who couldn’t even sit a mule? He reviewed the sweating patients in gloom, all distorted with bubos…”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There must always be somebody. However young or insignificant. There has to be somebody who comes from nowhere to say what others are too foolish or too frightened to say.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘The lure of Egypt, gentlemen, and the greater exotic lure of the lands beyond. The East – does not our way lie there? Europe shall, after tomorrow, be wholly ours. We do not wish America or Africa, shapeless savage continents with no future. But ah, the East. India, China, fabulous Japan. And, of course,’ with a fierce savagery replacing the mystic look, ‘we have the mission of striking at the enemy of mankind in that very East where he has so precarious a toehold –’”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The important thing is to get yourself born. You’re entitled to that. But you’re not entitled to life. Because if you were entitled to life, then the life would have to be quantified. How many years? Seventy? Sixty? Shakespeare was dead at fifty-two. Keats was dead at twenty-six. Thomas Chatterton at seventeen.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'But what happens when you die?' 'You’re finished with,' Enderby said promptly. 'Done for. And even if you weren’t – well, you die then, gasp your last, then you’re sort of wandering, free of body. You wander around and then you come in contact with a sort of big thing. What is this big thing? God, if you like.'”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Everything off. I want to see you in your horrific potbellied hairy filthy nakedness.'”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'We're in control, and we have what we want!'”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...a victim of bad medicine, bad air, bad food, farcical education, a despicable popular culture.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...who will show us God now? The Christians? Christianity was abolished by the Second Vatican Council. The Jews? They worship a bloody tribal deity....Then I saw how Islam contained everything and yet was as simple and sharp and bright as a sword. I had dreamt of no Islamic revolution in Britain but rather of a slow conversion, helped by an Islamic infiltration...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Christian ecumenical movement will have reached its limit, meaning that Catholicism will have turned into Protestantism and Protestantism into agnosticism....But Islam will not have lost any of its rigour....Supernature abhors a supervacuum. With the death of institutional Christianity will come the spread of Islam.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I lay a little while, naked, mottled, sallow, emaciated, smoking a cigarette that should have been postcoital but was not.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...To the mother hubbard girl, whose name seemed to be Janie: ‘It becomes you, it does really, that chunk of filthy butter muslin, but then you’re the sort of girl who could get away with anything, even having one tit bigger than the other.’ He did a comic oenophil act with the bottle of Marsovin...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Goebbels...now made an applauded entrance. He was no man to improvise a word or two of greeting; he had typewritten sheets.... He spoke of the cinema as the popular voice of the state...those products, themselves a means of cleansing the world film market through their purity and excellence of the regrettable decadent ordures excreted by international Jewry....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Grimaldi and a sixteen-year-old girl still at Hollywood High. He was a good journalist but he was going to die soon. At fifty he was on a bottle and a half of Californian brandy a day and four packs of Lucky Strike. His clothes smelt as though they were seeped in tobacco juice. His white forlock was stained with it...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…it is not easy to mark the boundaries of politics and religion.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And now," Herod calmly said, "You can kill all the new-born....Kill them all....take your men and let your men take their swords. Make sure they're sharp. To Bethlehem. Hack. Lunge. Chop. Kill.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Easier, lad, with those soft small bodies....Nothing to it. They're just soft squashy things.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“…love…In all languages the word is treacherous and hard to define.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Despite Jesus's appearance on the earth to preach the doctrine of love, and despite the stout work of his disciples (all put to death in curiously ludic ways by the serious), it cannot be said that the kingdom of heaven he promised as a reward for love is as yet likely to overtake the kingdom of the serious, which we also may call the kingdom of Caesar.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I take my title from the name the Jews have traditionally given the Roman Empire. You may expect to meet all manner of wickedness in what follows - pork-eating, lechery, adultery, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, the most ingenious varieties of cruelty, assassination, the worship of false gods and the sin of being uncircumcised.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘You served here how long, Cornelius?’ ‘Long enough to learn about what they believe. Not long enough to learn to speak their language well enough to get their confidence. Not long enough to learn how to read their books. Now I’ve three years before retirement and a measure of spare time for getting down to it.’ ‘This, you know,’ Marcellus said, ‘is all wrong. You’re not here to get their confidence or read their books. They’re a colonized people. We’re here to give orders. ‘They’d rather die than obey some of the Roman orders. Besides, it’s laid down that their religion is inviolate...’”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Few men can do more than touch the fringes of a woman's satisfaction.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh come, Caesar, art is for the impotent....Why dream when it's more satisfactory to be awake. The reality is potestas.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Christians are right when they render unto Caesar and unto God but keep the two tributes apart. All rule must be secular. When God enters politics, he turns into his opposite. Always has. Always will.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Oh, love, love, love — Love on a hilltop high, Love against a cloudless sky, Love where the scene is Painted by a million stars, Love with martinis In the cabarets and bars. Oh, love, love, love...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Find a cosy table Inside a restaurant, Somewhere formidable Where you’ll be très contents. Let your lady fair know That she is all you see, Prime her with a Pernod Or three. Watch her crack a lobster And strip it to the buff, Rough as when a mobster Gets tough. Keep the wine cascading And you’ll ensure Une petite spécialité called l’amour....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A heavy task, but there was light relief In the Germanic ambience, boisterous, brash, Torchlit parades and pogroms, guttural grief In emigration queues, the smash and crash Of pawnshop windows by insentient beef In uniform, the gush of beer, the splash Of schnapps, the joy of being drunk and Aryan, Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian. Human pain meant But little in the Gulf War's visual grammar, a Big feast of death to feed the cinecamera”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...The subjects we study at school can be divided roughly into two groups—the sciences and the arts. The sciences include mathematics, geography, chemistry, physics, and so on. Among the arts are drawing, painting, modelling, needlework, drama, music, literature. The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...1660 virtually starts a new era - an era in which the old land-owning class sinks and the new middle-class rises, an era too in which the English character seems to have become subtly changed. A sense of guilt seems to permeate all pleasure, and this has continued to the present day....the many living monuments to Puritan rule....the Englishman’s peculiar restraint - the coldness that repels so many Africans and Asians, an unwillingness to ‘let oneself go’.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“...in the Restoration period, feeling and imagination were mistrusted: feeling implied strong convictions, and strong convictions had produced a Civil War and the harsh rule of the Commonwealth; imagination suggested the mad, the wild, the uncouth, the fanatical. It was best to live a calm civilised life governed by reason. Such a life is best lived in the town, and the town is the true centre of culture; the country estates are impoverished, and little of interest is going on there; the country itself is barbaric.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you reject family - which a mother holds together - as well as the ties of Church and State, is there anything left for you?”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the world is to be improved it must be by the exercise of individual charity.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men are influenced by big loud empty words, styes which swell the eyelids and impede vision of the truth.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The church stands that it may be battered, but the fists that batter know their own impotence.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can no longer expect the one big book, the single achievement, to be an author's claim to posterity's regard. We shall be more inclined to assess the stature of a novelist by his ability to create what the French call an oeuvre, to present fragments of an individual vision in book after book, to build, if not a War and Peace or Ulysses, at least a shelf.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Graham Greene’s] ability to encapsulate the essence of an exotic setting in a single book is exemplified in The Heart of the Matter (1948); his contemporary Evelyn Waugh stated that the West Africa of that book replaced the true remembered West Africa of his own experience.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I myself was, for nearly six years, in such close touch with the Malay language that it affected my English and still affects my thinking. When I wrote a novel called A Clockwork Orange, no European reader saw that the Malay word for "man" – orang – was contained in the title (Malay students of English invariably write "orang squash"...”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Stendhal] was small, ugly and obsessed by physical beauty in others, and he spent most of his time in salons and opera houses, pursuing aristocratic hostesses and singers. After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Italy, adopted his pseudonym and began to write. He was a sexual freebooter who “found a notion of obtaining happiness from a virtuous woman wholly inconceivable”. At 59, unmarried, syphilitic and obscure, he dropped dead in a Paris street.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The British arrived with no intention of conquest: the East India Company had set up trading posts on the western seaboard, and its officers were called on by the native sultans to help with the putting down of rapacious river barons. The parallel with India is exact, and Stamford Raffles is a perfect analogue of Robert Clive. First came trade, then the amateur protective army, finally the flag....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Maugham was a mere visitor and did not have to take any language examinations; a civil servant like myself was forced to reach degree level in Malay....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All that the Malays can do is run the police force and the army.... They are not fitted even to the lowlier mechanical skills, such as car maintenance. They are essentially a people who have been pulled out of the kampongs into the towns, and the town in Malaysia seems essentially a Chinese creation....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is a profound middle-class nostalgia for the days of British protection....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Penang is a paradise, and east coast Kelantan has beautiful Malay women who walk proudly ahead of their husbands and scorn Koranic purdah....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With such exquisite women there is little need for aphrodisiacs....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Chickaks or geckos chirp on the walls....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Somerset Maugham refers more than once to the pleasure of the Malayan morning - papaya and eggs and bacon and strong British tea taken while the air is cool and the sun awaits its sudden thrust into the green land....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Singapore) is not even a place where a white man is permitted to go to pieces....”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source