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The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed.

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
Rather
Book
Absorbing
Absorbed
Adult
Relation
Adults
Books

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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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I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
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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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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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Fumbling for a word is everybody's birthright.
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All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
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The state is never so efficient as when it wants money.
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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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A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.
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...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.
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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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Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.
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I didn't think I experimented.
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In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.
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We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.
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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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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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Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.
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As we grow older, the memories of early life brighten, those of maturity and senescence grow dim and confused.
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