129 quotes
…British louts with guitars and emetic little songs…infantile screamers…
Tremor of Intent (1966)
…the British. Haughty, white, fat, ugly, by no means sympathique, cold…
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)
…jumped-up commercials pretending, too late, to be the ruling class..
The Right to an Answer (1960)
...like a ship, clean and trim on a dirty sea of pox and camel-dung.
Napoleon Symphony (1974)
'My darling one....I shall be thinking of you while you are away and hope you will remember to wrap up warm when you go out at night.'
A Clockwork Orange (1962)
Pornography….the reader panting, eventually masturbating
A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)
…my two chronic diseases of gluttony and satyriasis…
Tremor of Intent (1966)
England become a feeble-lighted Moon of America…
One Hand Clapping (1961)
...the dark brought out the prostitutes, Malay divorcees mostly, quietly moving from light to light, gaudy and graceful, like other of night’s creatures.
Beds in the East (1959)
From ancient drains and sewers of the language (maritime inns and brothels…), from scrawls in the catacombs…whoremasters’ chapbooks…the vocabulary of tavern brawls
Devil of a State (1961)
...Daudet differs from the hate-filled Baudelaire and Maupassant in being gentle to fellow-sufferers from the disease of life. Syphilis in him did not engender misanthropy.
Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)
Lydgate opened the sort of letter…”My dear husband I very good…I come in flying ship…we be very happy…love.” It was as satisfactory a letter as he had ever received from a woman.
Devil of a State (1961)
Her face was that of a boy gang-leader, smooth with the innocence of one who, by the same quirk as blinds a man to the mystery of whistling or riding a bicycle, has never mastered the art of affection or compassion or properly learned the moral dichotomy.
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)
...an Empire now crashing about their ears. The Sikh smiled at the vanity of human aspirations.
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)
“...reality’s always dull, you know...”
Time for a Tiger (1956)
That so many writers have been prepared to accept a kind of martyrdom is the best tribute that flesh can pay to the living spirit of man as expressed in his literature. One cannot doubt that the martyrdom will continue to be gladly embraced. To some of us, the wresting of beauty out of language is the only thing in the world that matters.
…death came so easily, hardly announced, without apparent cause, often greeted with smiles.
Beds in the East (1959)
...the bathroom which Crabbe visited showed signs that Moneypenny now regarded even a lavatory as supererogatory.
Beds in the East (1959)
“…as the cinema shows us, they are much more accessible and, for that matter, much more wanton than our own women"
Time for a Tiger (1956)
…slang…the home-made language of the ruled, not the rulers, the acted upon, the used, the used up. It is demotic poetry emerging in flashes of ironic insight.
A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English (1992)