-
‘…you read mostly menus and the moles on whores’ bellies….’
Anthony Burgess -
The Antipods…were always ready to burst.
Anthony Burgess
-
'All right,' said Rowlandson. He began shakily to count out notes. Near-broken, he was still an Englishman; he would not bargain.
Anthony Burgess -
‘…Your little feuilleton…recording…my crude nabob’s philistinism…’
Anthony Burgess -
There he lieth, tossing in the guilt of his lewdness, the primal lecher, neglectful of his duties to a fair wife but all too ready to plunge his sizzling steel into the slaking black mud of a base Indian.
Anthony Burgess -
The window opened gently and a still Autumn night entered cat-like. Edwin smelt freedom and London autumn – decay, smoke, cold, motor oil.
Anthony Burgess -
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 -
I know little about the women of my own race...
Anthony Burgess
-
'The scientific approach to life is not necessarily appropriate to states of visceral anguish.'
Anthony Burgess -
'Salam aleikum.'
Anthony Burgess -
Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva. And there was the slow movement and the lovely last singing movement still to come. I was cured all right.
Anthony Burgess -
Outside, the main doors behind him, he was hit full in the chest by autumn. The doggy wind leapt about him and nipped; leaves skirred along the pavement, the scrape of the ferrules of sticks; melancholy, that tetrasyllable, sat on a plinth in the middle of the square. English autumn, and the whistling tiny souls of the dead round the war memorial.
Anthony Burgess -
Rosemary’s reputation was known; he would, by obscure logic, become retrospectively a cuckold.
Anthony Burgess -
…the British. Haughty, white, fat, ugly, by no means sympathique, cold…
Anthony Burgess
-
He forgot that the Malays revere cats and that the Chinese merely relish them.
Anthony Burgess -
‘You are admitting, then, to frivolity of attitude to important global problems?’
Anthony Burgess -
…it was a cardinal rule in the East not to show one’s true feelings.
Anthony Burgess -
Ah, well, if they wanted their adultery, what did it matter to me? I hadn’t much room to talk, anyway, with my five-pound prostitutes who did a bunk and the Japanese girls who cost far less and didn’t do a bunk and whatever I was likely to pick up in Colombo.
Anthony Burgess -
Grimaldi and a sixteen-year-old girl still at Hollywood High. He was a good journalist but he was going to die soon. At fifty he was on a bottle and a half of Californian brandy a day and four packs of Lucky Strike. His clothes smelt as though they were seeped in tobacco juice. His white forlock was stained with it...
Anthony Burgess -
…the Malay word chium meant to plough the beloved’s face with one’s nose
Anthony Burgess
-
...he became one with his Chinese parishioners, announcing a trade as honest as that of the dentist, the seller of rice-wine, the brothel-keeper, the purveyor of quack rejuvenators and aphrodisiacs, or the vendor of shark’s-fin strips.
Anthony Burgess -
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 -
…for thy huggest thy bolster, which men call a Dutch wife in some parts.
Anthony Burgess -
Him they would not harm, Englishmen being, though infidel, yet the race of past District Officers, judges, doctors, men perhaps, in their time, more helpful than otherwise, powerful but mild.
Anthony Burgess