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The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.

Anthony Burgess

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Anthony Burgess
Age: 76 †
Born: 1917
Born: February 25
Died: 1993
Died: November 22
Author
Autobiographer
Composer
Dramaturge
Journalist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Novelist
Poet
Manchester
England
John Anthony Burgess Wilson
John Burgess Wilson
Joseph Kell
Substitutes
Possession
Becomes
Reading
Book
Substitute

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I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.
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The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.
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Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.
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It'll be your own torture, he said, serious. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.
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A character, to be acceptable as more than a chess piece, has to be ignorant of the future, unsure about the past, and not at all sure of what he's supposed to be doing.
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If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
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As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties.
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All novels are experimental.
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If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.
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A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
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Art is rare and sacred and hard work, and there ought to be a wall of fire around it.
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With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.
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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.
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The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science.
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You don't say, 'I've done it!' You come, with a kind of horrible desperation, to realize that this will do.
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That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.
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To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
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When the State withers, humanity flowers.
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Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.
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When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.
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