Anthony Burgess

“The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.”

“A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.”

“Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.”

“One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going.”

“Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy.”

“I went abroad to Malaya and came back and tended naturally to gravitate towards the south, I suppose, near London where things seemed to be going on; but I'm still a Lancashire man, and what I want to write someday is a novel about Manchester. Very much a regional novel.”

“Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.”

“Yes yes yes, there it was. Youth must go, ah yes. But 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 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.”

“What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

“You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.”

“The heresy of an age of reason,' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.”

“An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.”

“Minister: As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?Alex: As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on me, Fred.”

“It may not be nice to be good, 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 goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”

“It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.”

“The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?”

“And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.”

“To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art.”

“People don't want to know. They have to be made to know. Whether they act on what they know is up to them. But they have to know.”

“Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they should be presented hypocritically as good artists just because they're supposed to be advancing the frontiers of freedom of expression or... ...demonstrating that there should be no limit on subject matter.”