Quote

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.

Anthony Burgess

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Russian
German
Italian
Witty
Harmonically
French
Stodgy
Pure
Manic
Simple
Elimination
Enough
Arrive

More quotes by Anthony Burgess

Image
A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of the journey.
Anthony Burgess
Image
The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.
Anthony Burgess
Image
But what I do I do because I like to do.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Each man kills the thing he loves.
Anthony Burgess
Image
...the essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.
Anthony Burgess
Image
You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured!
Anthony Burgess
Image
You have no idea how pleasant it is not to have any future. It's like having a totally efficient contraceptive.
Anthony Burgess
Image
I was cured all right.
Anthony Burgess
Image
All novels are experimental.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Immortality makes sense only when the individual soul can be thought of as merging into a great collective mush of sainthood. If we take anything with us into the next world, it is not what survives in the memories of our relicts.
Anthony Burgess
Image
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.
Anthony Burgess
Image
As a chamber hung round about with looking-glasses represents the face upon every turn, thus all the world doth the mercy and the bounty of God though that be visible, yet it discovers an invisible God and his invisible properties.
Anthony Burgess
Image
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.
Anthony Burgess
Image
The purpose of education is to fit us for life in a civilised community, and it seems to follow from the subjects we study that the two most important things in civilised life are Art and Science.
Anthony Burgess
Image
I was always on my oddy knocky.
Anthony Burgess
Image
I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
Anthony Burgess
Image
This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
Anthony Burgess
Image
Hitler was a teetotalitarian.
Anthony Burgess
Image
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.
Anthony Burgess