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Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare.

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
Anywhere
Atheism
Trade
Stratford
City
Trades
Cities
Vastly
Belief
Overrated
Else
Shakespeare
Like
Rome

More quotes by Anthony Burgess

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Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.
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But don't think that it's a system or a culture or a state or a person that does the letting down. It's our expectations that let us down. It begins in the warmth of the womb and the discovery that it's cold outside. But it's not the cold's fault that it's cold.
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If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.
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laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.
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The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.
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When the State withers, humanity flowers.
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
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The state is never so efficient as when it wants money.
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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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The meal was pretentious - a kind of beetroot soup with greasy croutons pork underdone with loud vulgar cabbage, potato croquettes, tinned peas in tiny jam-tart cases, watery gooseberry sauce trifle made with a resinous wine, so jammy that all my teeth lit up at once.
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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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The essence of pop stardom is immaturity - a wretched little pseudo-musical gift, a development of the capacity to shock, a short-lived notoriety, extreme depression, a yielding to the suicidal impulse.
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Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.
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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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This is great art, we've been told this by the great pundits of our age. And in consequence why should we bother to learn? There's nothing more delightful than to be told, 'You don't have to learn, my boy. There's nothing in it. Modern art? There's nothing in it.
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Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.
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And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.
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Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.
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Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.
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Put it off for a bit. All life is putting off. Well, not entirely.
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