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I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.

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
Conclude
Nonsense
Sense
Much

More quotes by Anthony Burgess

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The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I have read.
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But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the CAUSE of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into what is the cause of GOODNESS, so why of the other shop?
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Blessed tree and blessed birds, that were to be neither saved nor damned.
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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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Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.
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To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.
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It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.
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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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Translation is not a matter of words only: it is a matter of making intelligible a whole culture.
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Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?
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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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The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
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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.
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Elgar is not manic enough to be Russian, not witty or pointilliste enough to be French, not harmonically simple enough to be Italian and not stodgy enough to be German. We arrive at his Englishry by pure elimination.
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And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight.
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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.
Anthony Burgess
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Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.
Anthony Burgess
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Civilised my syphilised yarbles.
Anthony Burgess
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It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. To remember where you come from is part of where you're going.
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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.
Anthony Burgess