Anthony Burgess Quotes
-
The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil.
-
'The scientific approach to life is not necessarily appropriate to states of visceral anguish.'
-
...even the police discussed this violence as possibly coming within the scope of their terms of reference.
-
‘…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…’
-
…he had to admit to a faint admiration (faint as angostura colouring gin and water)
-
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?
-
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’).
-
...like a ship, clean and trim on a dirty sea of pox and camel-dung.
-
I know little about the women of my own race...
-
‘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.’....
-
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.
-
'Salam aleikum.'
-
'…as the cinema shows us, they are much more accessible and, for that matter, much more wanton than our own women'
-
‘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.’
-
'As for your circumcisions, the chief modin can arrange all. Your wine must return to the earth, whence the grape came. Haram.'
-
She sank again into the salty water...into the delicious warm brine-tasting depths of her grief.
-
'All right,' said Rowlandson. He began shakily to count out notes. Near-broken, he was still an Englishman; he would not bargain.
-
'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.'
-
‘…you read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies….’
-
I lay a little while, naked, mottled, sallow, emaciated, smoking a cigarette that should have been postcoital but was not.