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'We're in control, and we have what we want!'
Anthony Burgess
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'We believe in Allah, we take the Koran as a sacred book. In our land we broke the power of infidel Rum, in his own land we struck down her Sultan whom men called the Pope, in Malta we slew the Knights, sworn enemies of Islam. Inform your people that we are sent by Allah to geld the evil Turk and raise high the people of the Nile.'
Anthony Burgess
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‘…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…’
Anthony Burgess
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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
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…he had to admit to a faint admiration (faint as angostura colouring gin and water)
Anthony Burgess
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I know little about the women of my own race...
Anthony Burgess
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‘What you could do with is a nice strong cup of tea, sir. I’ll tell the kuki to make you one.’ ‘Does it really do any good, Nabby? (That was better.) ‘I’ve tried every damn thing.’....
Anthony Burgess
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Mr Raj had been purely Orientally and fancifully complimentary (‘So great a man, his lingam as long and thick as a tree, the father of whole villages’).
Anthony Burgess
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'Salam aleikum.'
Anthony Burgess
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'As for your circumcisions, the chief modin can arrange all. Your wine must return to the earth, whence the grape came. Haram.'
Anthony Burgess
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...even the police discussed this violence as possibly coming within the scope of their terms of reference.
Anthony Burgess
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She sank again into the salty water...into the delicious warm brine-tasting depths of her grief.
Anthony Burgess
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...like a ship, clean and trim on a dirty sea of pox and camel-dung.
Anthony Burgess
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'…as the cinema shows us, they are much more accessible and, for that matter, much more wanton than our own women'
Anthony Burgess
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Singapura means lion-city; prehistoric, myopic, Sanskrit-speaking visitors having spotted a mangy tiger or two in the mangroves. Sly Malays sometimes call it Singa pura-pura, which means ‘pretending to be a lion’….It is a profoundly provincial town pretending to be a metropolis.
Anthony Burgess
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‘…you read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies….’
Anthony Burgess
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'All right,' said Rowlandson. He began shakily to count out notes. Near-broken, he was still an Englishman; he would not bargain.
Anthony Burgess
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Lim Cheng Po, Anglican, Royalist, cricketer, respectable husband and father, allowed his animal reflexes out for an avenue walk on the lead.
Anthony Burgess
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From ancient drains and sewers of the language (maritime inns and brothels…), from scrawls in the catacombs…whoremasters’ chapbooks…the vocabulary of tavern brawls
Anthony Burgess
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...an Empire now crashing about their ears. The Sikh smiled at the vanity of human aspirations.
Anthony Burgess
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‘She is a goddess,’ said Ambrose, drunkenly and stoutly. ‘…And she wants me. She’s the pursuer…She’s the epitome of woman, not,’ he said, ‘not a second-hand bundle of coy erogeneity draped,’ he said, ‘in an all-too-diaphanous robe,’ he said, ‘of pudeur.’
Anthony Burgess
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…Novello should be extremely grateful that his innubile daughter was being taken off his hands by a Tasca.
Anthony Burgess
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The Antipods…were always ready to burst.
Anthony Burgess
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…the cold deflation of crapula…
Anthony Burgess
