382 Quotes by Anthony Burgess

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. – – “A Clockwork Orange Resucked” intro to first full American version 1986.

I must give up seeing people, I told myself.

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.

What’s it going to be then, eh?

Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory.

He said it was artificial respiration but now I find I’m to have his child.

Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness?

For the serious artist does not satisfy needs.

Well, well, well, well. If it isn’t fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou.