382 Quotes by Anthony Burgess

I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told, 'You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it.

In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.

You have no idea how pleasant it is not to have any future. It's like having a totally efficient contraceptive.

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

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch.

The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.

Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.