Anthony Burgess Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• I didn't think; I experimented.

  Anthony Burgess

  Science, Thinking, Action

  11 Copy quote

• Death comes along like a gas bill one can't pay.

  Anthony Burgess

  Pay, Bills, Gas

  1974 Interview in Playboy.

  4 Copy quote

• The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Catholic, Musician

  4 Copy quote

• If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.

  Anthony Burgess

  Sex, Writing, Fiction

  17 Copy quote

• I chart a little first-list of names, rough synopsis of chapters, and so on. But one daren't overplan; so many things are generated by the sheer act of writing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Names, Firsts

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.51, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  17 Copy quote

• Hitler was a teetotalitarian.

  Anthony Burgess

  Anthony Burgess (2010). “Byrne”, p.36, Random House

  13 Copy quote

• There is a satisfactory boniness about grammar which the flesh of sheer vocabulary requires before it can become a vertebrate and walk the earth.

  Anthony Burgess

  Vocabulary, Earth, Flesh

  Anthony Burgess (1964). “Language made plain”

  11 Copy quote

• A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a great book. . . I think a writer has to extend very widely, as well as plunge very deep, to be a great novelist.

  Anthony Burgess

  Book, Writing, Men

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  12 Copy quote

• Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.

  Anthony Burgess

  Witty, Italian, Simple

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “Homage to QWERT YUIOP: essays”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• For no man is damned precisely because God hath not chosen him, because he is not elected, but because he is a sinner, and doth wilfully refuse the means of grace offered.

  Anthony Burgess

  Mean, Men, Grace

  8 Copy quote

• Literature is all, or mostly, about sex.

  Anthony Burgess

  Sex, Writing, Literature

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “Little Wilson and Big God”, p.173, Random House

  12 Copy quote

• I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me.

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing, Names, Desire

  Anthony Burgess, Earl G. Ingersoll, Mary C. Ingersoll (2008). “Conversations with Anthony Burgess”, p.52, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  6 Copy quote

• Writers are rarely their own best critics, nor are critics.

  Anthony Burgess

  Critics

  Anthony Burgess (2011). “A Clockwork Orange”, p.15, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

• But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.

  Anthony Burgess

  Thinking, Discovery, Expectations

  Anthony Burgess (1980). “Earthly powers”, Simon & Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.

  Anthony Burgess

  Believe, Unseen, Christ

  15 Copy quote

• A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.

  Anthony Burgess

  Journey, Fiction, Should

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “Homage to QWERT YUIOP: essays”, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

• A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.

  Anthony Burgess

  Character, Past, Chess Pieces

  Anthony Burgess (1986). “Homage to QWERT YUIOP: essays”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

• ...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

  Anthony Burgess

  Real, Men, Essentials

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.169, W. W. Norton & Company

  7 Copy quote

• The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.

  Anthony Burgess

  School, Government, Self

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.46, W. W. Norton & Company

  10 Copy quote

• As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God; though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties.

  Anthony Burgess

  God, Glasses, World

  Anthony Burgess (1656). “CXLV Espository Sermons Upon the Whole 17th Chapter of the Gospel According to St. John: Or, Christ's Prayer Before His Passion Explicated and Both Practically and Polemically Improved”, p.159

  8 Copy quote

• The writer's life seethes within but not without.

  Anthony Burgess

  Writing

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Dog, Real, Animal

  16 Copy quote

• That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.

  Anthony Burgess

  Men, Doubt, Literature

  "English Literature: A Survey for Students". Book by Anthony Burgess, 1958.

  4 Copy quote

• I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.

  Anthony Burgess

  Clockwork

  Anthony Burgess (2012). “A Clockwork Orange (Restored Text)”, p.127, W. W. Norton & Company

  8 Copy quote

• What critics often ask for is the impossible, though this may be a salutary means of extending the borders of art.

  Anthony Burgess

  Art, Mean, Borders

  Anthony Burgess (1990). “You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess”, Heinemann Educational Books

  7 Copy quote

Page 3 of 7

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin