“In China he had spoken good Mandarin, and in ten years this had become his first tongue. Here he found himself with a parish of Hokkien and Cantonese speakers and a few English people whose language he could hardly talk. His French, severed from its sources of nourishment, grown coarse through lack of use, halted and wavered, searching for the right word which Mandarin was always ready to supply.”

— Anthony Burgess

Fiction, The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)

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

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Anthony Burgess 297

English writer 1917–1993

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