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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
Either
May
Permitted
Novelist
Novelists
Although
Intelligence
Intelligent
Intellectual

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Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like the very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva.
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Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
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The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.
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It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.
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Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?
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The state is never so efficient as when it wants money.
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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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laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.
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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 devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.
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Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
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The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.
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All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
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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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Keep away from physicians. It is all probing and guessing and pretending with them. They leave it to Nature to cure in her own time, but they take the credit. As well as very fat fees.
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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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Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.
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Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?
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Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
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Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!
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