Quotes from Anthony Burgess

Audiences did not exactly clamour for their money back, but they wondered why Kubrick left out the dénouement. People wrote to me about this—indeed much of my later life has been expended on Xeroxing statements of intention and the frustration of intention—while both Kubrick and my New York publisher coolly bask in the rewards of their misdemeanour. Life is, of course, terrible.

Then there was another picture of some veck I thought I knew, and it was this Minister of the Inferior or Interior.

It is not the novelist's job to preach; it is his duty to show.

What's done can't be undone. How do I fit into this new world? I should have been warned, somebody should have told me. How was I to know that that sort of world wasn't going to go on for ever?

A bondade vem de dentro. A bondade é algo que se escolhe. Quando um homem perde a capacidade de escolha, deixa de ser homem.

her insan sevdiÄŸi ÅŸeyi öldürür. Ceza öÄŸesi budur belki de.

is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. 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.

He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.

It's funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.

If all you bastards are on the side of God then I'm glad I belong to the other shop.

you are out of the field of the novel

Power, power, everybody like wants power

Ma il vero peccato sta nell'intenzione essenziale. Un uomo che non può scegliere cessa di essere un uomo

Ä°yilik seçilemeyen bir ÅŸeydir. Ä°nsan seçemediÄŸinde insanl?ktan ç?kar. (syf. 73 – 74)

Bondade é que se escolhe. Quando um homem não pode escolher, ele deixa de ser um homem.

Toplumun onaylad??? eylemlerin d???na ç?kam?yorsun, sadece iyilik yapabilen küçük bir makinesin. Ayr?ca ÅŸu marjinal koÅŸullanmalar meselesinin… içyüzünü aç?kça görüyorum. Müzik ve cinsellik, edebiyat ve sanat, art?k bunlar haz deÄŸil ac? veriyordur herhalde. (syf. 136 – 137)

Was war, then, the big solution after all? Were those crude early theorists right? War the great aphrodisiac, the great source of world adrenaline, the solvent of ennui, Angst, melancholia, accidia, spleen? War itself a massive sexual act, culminating in a detumescence which was not mere metaphorical dying? War, finally, the controller, the trimmer and excisor, the justifier of fertility?

Let us have evil prancing on the page and, up to the very last line, sneering in the face of all the inherited beliefs, Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Holy Roller, about people being able to make themselves better. Such a book would be sensational, and so it is. But I do not think it is a fair picture of human life. I

They did not understand him. Poor Dorothy had been long in the situation they seemed only to have arrived at, but she tried to tear the head off her doll and cried what sounded like Gog . — There, you hear, her mother said. Clever girl, she crooned at her. Say God. Say sky. — Koy . — She has said her prayers, Kit said in weariness.

A flip dark chill winter bastard though dry

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange-meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State.

If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.

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 woodness (goodness) or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

It's funny how the colours of the like real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.