Anthony Burgess Quotes
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'We're in control, and we have what we want!'
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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.'
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‘…Women I do not much care for myself - I prefer little Greek shepherd-boys…’
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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?
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…he had to admit to a faint admiration (faint as angostura colouring gin and water)
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I know little about the women of my own race...
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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.’....
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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’).
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'Salam aleikum.'
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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.'
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...even the police discussed this violence as possibly coming within the scope of their terms of reference.
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She sank again into the salty water...into the delicious warm brine-tasting depths of her grief.
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...like a ship, clean and trim on a dirty sea of pox and camel-dung.
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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'
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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.
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‘…you read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies….’
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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.
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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.
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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
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...an Empire now crashing about their ears. The Sikh smiled at the vanity of human aspirations.
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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.’
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…Novello should be extremely grateful that his innubile daughter was being taken off his hands by a Tasca.
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The Antipods…were always ready to burst.
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…the cold deflation of crapula…