Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The adult relation to books is one of absorbing rather than being absorbed. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I like nothing better in this world than a good clean book, brother.” — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. -----… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I see you have books under your arm, brother. It is indeed a rare pleasure these days to come across somebody that… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. Average number of books in a… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A man can write one book that can be great, but this doesn't make him a great writer-just the writer of a… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Literature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
I went abroad to Malaya and came back and tended naturally to gravitate towards the south, I suppose, near London where things… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“It is for the reader to see in the book the nature of the motives of human actions and perhaps learn something… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A work of fiction should be, for its author, a journey into the unknown, and the prose should convey the difficulties of… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
I enjoy journalism; anybody does. You see the results immediately; you've got an immediate audience instead of having to wait for your… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“At the age of fifteen he had bought off a twopenny stall in the market a duo-decimo book of recipes, gossip, and… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“I’ll tell you a thing that will shock you. It will certainly shock the readers of Writer’s Digest. What I often do… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although... he may be permitted to be an intellectual. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
“A man who serves language, however imperfectly, should always serve truth.” — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
All human life is here, but the Holy Ghost seems to be somewhere else. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Rome's just a city like anywhere else. A vastly overrated city, I'd say. It trades on belief just as Stratford trades on Shakespeare. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
Without class differences, England would cease to be the living theatre it is. — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
The ideal reader of my novels is a lapsed Catholic and failed musician, short-sighted, colour-blind, auditorily biased, who has read the books that I… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky… — Anthony Burgess Copy Share Image
