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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.

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
Lived
Pops
Notoriety
Short
Depression
Yielding
Development
Impulse
Stardom
Littles
Extremes
Pseudo
Little
Musical
Suicidal
Gift
Wretched
Essence
Extreme
Capacity
Shock
Immaturity

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Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance music, for instance.
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I was always on my oddy knocky.
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If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others.
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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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Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?
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Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.
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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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The downtrodden are the great creators of slang.
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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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If you want to be considered a poet, you will have to show mastery of the petrarchan sonnet form or the sestina. Your musical efforts must begin with well-formed fugues. There is no substitute for craft... Art begins with craft, and there is no art until craft has been mastered.
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As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.
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For the serious artist does not satisfy needs
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Come with uncle and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones...you are invited!
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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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But what I do I do because I like to do.
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The state is never so efficient as when it wants money.
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Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
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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.
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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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All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else.
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