382 Quotes by Anthony Burgess

There is the devastatingly simple, yet profound, moral dilemma, which underlies the book: is it better for a man to choose to be bad than to be conditioned to be good?

Because I’m too drunk to feel the pain if you hit me, and if you kill me I’ll be glad to be dead.

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

This must be a real horrorshow film if you’re so keen on my viddying it.

Violence makes violence.

You don’t say, ‘I’ve done it!’ You come, with a kind of horrible desperation, to realize that this will do.

You got used to a bit of peace and you got used to a bit of extra pretty polly.

What’s on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?’ I nudged him hard, saying: ‘Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There’ll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.

Oh, I’m dying,′ I like moaned. ‘Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh.’ ‘Appendy shitehouse,’ grumbled this veck.