Anthony Burgess Quotes - Page 2

Perhaps, all these years, the historiographers had been unwilling to recognize history as a spiral, perhaps because a spiral was so difficult to describe. Easier to photograph the spiral from the top, easier to flatten the spring into a coil.
Anthony Burgess
A work of art is somehow organic, and to slash a painting or smash a statue is not just an offence against property: it is an offence against life.
Anthony Burgess
Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they should be presented hypocritically as good artists just because they're supposed to be advancing the frontiers of freedom of expression or... ...demonstrating that there should be no limit on subject matter.
Anthony Burgess
The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.
Anthony Burgess
But when the social entity grows large, becomes a megalopolis, a state, a federation, then the governing machine grows remote, impersonal, even inhuman. It takes money from us for purposes we do not seem to sanction; it treats us as abstract statistics; it controls an army; it supports a police force whose function does not always appear to be protective.
Anthony Burgess
Dreams go by opposites I was once told.
Anthony Burgess
In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.
Anthony Burgess
What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
Anthony Burgess
You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right.
Anthony Burgess
The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?
Anthony Burgess
The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.
Anthony Burgess
When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.
Anthony Burgess
And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.
Anthony Burgess
You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.
Anthony Burgess
Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.
Anthony Burgess
The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.
Anthony Burgess
And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.
Anthony Burgess
You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.
Anthony Burgess
People don't want to know. They have to be made to know. Whether they act on what they know is up to them. But they have to know.
Anthony Burgess
Language exists less to record the actual than to liberate the imagination.
Anthony Burgess
We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.
Anthony Burgess
Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.
Anthony Burgess
When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
Anthony Burgess