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Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate.

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
Order
Clockwork
May
Operate
Good
Exist
Choice
Along
Choices
Moral
Evil

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Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
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The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.
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The practice of fiction can be dangerous: it puts ideas into the head of the world.
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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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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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Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.
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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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Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.
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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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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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If you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.
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If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.
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Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is.
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I was very lighthearted. This often the way when the abandonment of personal responsibility is enforced: neither wronged innocence or just guilt can seriously impair the sensation of freedom one has.
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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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The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Hitler was a teetotalitarian.
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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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The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
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