“And now, as so often happened, my brain in a fever took over the datum of the dream and enriched and expanded it. Norman Douglas spoke pedantically on behalf of the buggers. `We have this right, you see, to shove it up. On a road to Capri I found a postman who had fallen off his bicycle, you see, unconscious, somewhat concussed. He lay in exactly the right position. I buggered him with athletic swiftness: he would come to and feel none the worse.’ The Home Secretary nodded sympathetically while the rain wept on to him in Old Palace Yard. `I mean, minors. I mean, there’d be little in it for us if you restricted the act to consenting males over, say, eighteen. Boys are so pliable, so exquisitely sodomizable. You do see that, don’t you, old man?’ The Home Secretary nodded as if to say: Of course, old public-school man myself, old boy. I saw a lot of known faces, Pearson, Tyrwit, Lewis, Charlton, James, all most reasonable, claiming the legal right to maul and suck and bugger. I put myself in the gathering and said, also most reasonable, that it was nothing to do with the law: you were still left with the ethics and theology of the thing. What we had a right to desire was love, and nothing hindered that right. Oh nonsense, he’s such a bore. As for theology, isn’t there that apocryphal book of the Bible in which heterosexuality is represented as the primal curse?”

— Anthony Burgess

Fiction, Earthly Powers (1980)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "And now, as so often happened, my brain in a fever took over the datum of the dream and enriched and expanded it. Norma…" by Anthony Burgess?

Anthony Burgess 297

English writer 1917–1993

Related quotes

“A lot of people say there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I don't think there's a fine line, I actually think there's a yawning gulf. You see some poor bugger scuffling up the road with balloons tied to his ears, he's not going home to invent a rocket, is he?”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“When you’ve found the right one - when you see him, when you’re with him - you’ll feel like you’re coming home.”

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (1933) American children's writer

Source: Now I'll Tell You Everything

“Whenever a thousand or so of his men would fall off an Alp, he [Hannibal] would tell the rest to cheer up, the elephants were all right. If someone had given him a shove at the right moment, much painful history might have been avoided.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part II: Ancient Greeks and Worse, Hannibal

“You have a memory chip that small implanted in you,” he verified.
I nodded, guessing this was somewhat worse than having cooties.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

“He did not practise law and so whatever money I earned, I just placed before him. He invested in business--trucks, cars--but lost everything. I could not bear to see him unhappy. Often he would disappear from home for months on end. The bank people would come and harass me, ask for my property as I was unable to repay the loans. This happened several times. I had to sell everything I had. I will never forget or forgive myself for not being by his bedside before he died. I had a programme in Bombay, but I did not want to go. He insisted because we needed the money. While I was performing, he died.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

Her selfless devotion to her husband was never considered a sacrifice by her and even though he was a brahmin, a lawyer, it was ironically she who supported him. In "On Gangubai Hangal by Sabina Sehgal Computer Science & Engineering - University of Washington".

“I would have known right away who you was when the sun blotted out your face the way it did when I took you to the grape arbor. I would have known at once when my water broke. And when I did see your face it had more than a hint of what you would look like after all these years. I would have known who you were right away because the cup after cup of water you drank proved and connected to the fact that you dribbled clear spit on my face the day I got to 124. I would have known right off, but Paul D distracted me. Otherwise I would have seen my fingernail prints right there on your forehead for all the world to see. From when I held your head up, out in the shed. And later on, when you asked me about the earrings I used to dangle for you to play with, I would have recognized you right off, except for Paul D.”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved (1987), Ch. 20

“Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

Source: The Yellow Wall-Paper

“Wilson is adopting a dangerous line. He wants to pose as the great arbiter of the war. His Fourteen Points are very dangerous. He speaks of the freedom of the seas. That would involve the abolition of the right of search and seizure, and the blockade. We shall not agree to that. Such a change would not suit this country. Wilson does not see that by laying down terms without consulting the Allies, he is making their position very difficult. He had no right to reply to the German Note without consultation, and I insisted upon a cablegram being sent to him. The position is very disturbing.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (10 October 1918), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 240
Prime Minister

“My illness is alive, the threats to my life are real; yet it is only my death I feel, only the lessening made by my own loss. I am gone, Kohler, right now; and who is so dead as one so dead to a moment of life that life can't raise him up? Not to be here, not to see tomorrow—which, when I see it I shall find as stupid and empty as I found today—is appalling, Kohler, appalling… to slip into the insignificance of history like a thought held in a dream…”

William H. Gass book The Tunnel

Source: The Tunnel (1995), p. 250

“I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Anthony Burgess 297

Related quotes

Related topics