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A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual.

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
Novelist
Novelists
Although
Intelligence
Intelligent
Intellectual
Either
May
Permitted

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Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000.
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To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.
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All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
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But we were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.
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Do they merit vitriol, even a drop of it? Yes, because they corrupt the young, persuading them that the mature world, which produced Beethoven and Schweitzer, sets an even higher value on the transient anodynes of youth than does youth itself.... They are the Hollow Men. They are electronic lice.
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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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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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Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.
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Every dogma has its day.
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Beckett does not believe in God, though he seems to imply that God has committed an unforgivable sin by not existing.
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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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But what I do I do because I like to do.
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Ignorance and poverty are the best condiments for the great feast of the world, but the inexperienced and poor are never invited to it.
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Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.
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For the serious artist does not satisfy needs
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I think art is sublimated libido. You can’t be a eunuch priest, and you can’t be a eunuch artist.
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Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.
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And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.
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Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance music, for instance.
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