Quotessence
Home / Authors / Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess Quotes

Writer

Filter quotes by topic

AllClockworkAnthony BurgessWorldA Clockwork OrangeArtIfsWritingMenBooksBookBook QuotesLifeEvilLittlesMoralOrangeBrotherMayNovelChoices

Famous Anthony Burgess Quotes

“There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition”

PeopleWritingHumansCharacterFactsShowsMoralNovelFailingFieldsPossibilityIncreaseTransformationChiefsIntroductionFablesAllegoryPeople Changing
Author:Anthony Burgess
Create image

“Novelists are perhaps the last people in the world to be entrusted with opinions. The nature of a novel is that it has no opinions, only the dialectic of contrary views, some of which, all of which, may be untenable and even silly. A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although he may be permitted to be an intellectual.”

PeopleWorldShouldMayLastsNatureViewsOpinionNovelIntellectualIntelligentContrarySillyNovelistsDialectics
Book:You've had your time: being the second part of the confessions of Anthony Burgess
Create image

“The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation.”

ShouldMadeBookFilmDiesThreeSexEasyKnownNovelViolenceWrittenWeekCenturyDangerMaterialsReaderPreparedPursueMade ItQuartersMisunderstandingGlorifyRaw MaterialsMisinterpretationQuarter Of A Century
Author:Anthony Burgess
Create image