Anthony Burgess: Trending quotes

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Anthony Burgess: 594 quotes12 likes

“…for thy huggest thy bolster, which men call a Dutch wife in some parts.”

Fiction, Devil of a State (1961)

“Nabby Adams, supine on the bed, grunted. It was four o’clock in the morning and he did not want to be talking. He had had a confused coloured dream about Bombay, shot with sharp pangs of unpaid bills. Over it all had brooded thirst, thirst for a warmish bottle of Tiger beer. Or Anchor. Or Carlsberg. He said, 'Did you bring any beer back with you?”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

“There he lieth, tossing in the guilt of his lewdness, the primal lecher, neglectful of his duties to a fair wife but all too ready to plunge his sizzling steel into the slaking black mud of a base Indian.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Nothing Like the Sun (1964)

“As I walked towards travel, that illusion of liberation, I strangely felt myself walking back into childhood.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“The church stands that it may be battered, but the fists that batter know their own impotence.”

Anthony Burgess

Non-Fiction, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965)

“The East would always present that calm face of faint astonishment, unmoved at the anger, not understanding the bitterness.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Time for a Tiger (1956)

“The rain eased off, but the streets were greasily wet, rainbowed with oil. I went to the bank for more five-pound notes, stood like a pauper in the public library reading the Christian Science Monitor, then went for the first drinks of the day to a dive-bar popular with merchants. Hungarian refugees waited on at the tables and a West Indian negro collected dirty glasses – we were all exiles together.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“He stayed in no one place very long, but he usually managed to absorb something of the atmosphere of each town, village or rubber estate he visited, and he always made quick contact with the local residents. These residents were invariably Europeans - planters, colonial officials, businessmen, or just men living in exile to escape from trouble or sadness at home - and there is little evidence that Maugham gained, or wished to gain, any direct knowledge of the lives and customs of the native peoples of the East. This must be disappointing to present-day Malay and Indian and Chinese and Eurasian readers of his stories, but we have to remember that (apart from the fact that Maugham had no time to learn Malay or Chinese or Tamil) the Western attitude to the Far East was very different in Maugham's time from what it is today.”

Anthony Burgess

Introduction to Maugham's Malaysian Stories (1969)
People, Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham

“Carlo looked as at the world of fallen man on the endless suburbs that passed for a city, an eatery in the likeness of a Sphinx (enter between its forepaws), another, for jumbo malts so thick you can't suck 'em through a straw, in the form of an elephant crouched as at the bidding of its mahout, gimcrack temples of various faiths, attap roofs of nutburger stands with Corinthian columns, loans loans loans, stores crammed with cutprice radios, a doughnuttery, homes like Swiss chalets, like Bavarian castles, miniature Blenheims, Strawberry Hills, Taj Mahals, a bank in the form of a tiny ocean liner, dusty trees on the boulevards (datepalm, orange, oleander), bars with neon bottles endlessly pouring, colleges for stuntmen, beauticians, morticians, degrees in drummajoretteship.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

“Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Doctor is Sick (1960)

“She was an appetising woman with a full-cheeked smile, about thirty, a Nordic blonde but not icy, though ice was suggested in its tamed winter-sport aspects : the flush after skating, log-fires and hot rum and butter, fine heavy thighs, that would warm your hand like a muff, under a skirt that had swirled in a rink waltz. Her beaver lamb coat was thrust back from a green suit : solid charms, thoroughly wholesome, were indicated.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“Yes yes yes, later. For now I would ask you to proclaim next Friday from the mimbar in the masjid that the French are protectors of the faith and friends of the Prophet.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

“…he became one with his Chinese parishioners, announcing a trade as honest as that of the dentist, the seller of rice-wine, the brothel-keeper, the purveyor of quack rejuvenators and aphrodisiacs, or the vendor of shark’s-fin strips.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

“You are admitting, then, to frivolity of attitude to important global problems?”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“Lim Cheng Po, Anglican, Royalist, cricketer, respectable husband and father, allowed his animal reflexes out for an avenue walk on the lead.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)

“If Shakespeare required a word and had not met it in civilised discourse, he unhesitatingly made it up.”

Anthony Burgess

Non-Fiction, A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)

“I was only the returned Oriental eccentric, drunk at that…”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“What we used to think of as exotic can now only be found in countries that cannot afford Americanization. Meaning no home comforts, peppers, unleavened bread. It is a kind thing to take one’s bit of tourist money there, to the deserving, and not put it in the hands of the disdainful Nicois or Cannois. If you can get into a country which is politically oppressed, that too is a good thing for the natives, for you are bringing a breath of freedom. Increasingly, perhaps, one ought to be travelling for the benefit of those who cannot afford or are not permitted to travel. We all belong to one another now, and no foreign country ought to be merely a sideshow….”

Anthony Burgess

"Thoughts on Travel".
Non-Fiction, Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)

“After all, what bit of money I’ve made has been made among mosquitoes and sand-flies, snakes in the bedroom, long monotonous damp heat, boredom, exasperation with native clerks. Who are these sweet stay-at-homes, sweet well-contents, to try and suck it out of me and feel aggrieved if they can’t have it?”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“Rosemary was only a spinster in the strict sense of denotation. She was eminently, eminently nubile.”

Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Beds in the East (1959)