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1917–1993 England
Anthony Burgess (25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) was an English writer and composer whose novels include the Malayan trilogy, A Clockwork Orange, the Enderby cycle, Nothing Like The Sun, Earthly Powers and The Kingdom Of The Wicked. He also produced critical works on Joyce, Lawrence, Hemingway and Shakespeare, and studies of language and of pornography.
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129 quotes
Edwin, so much himself a sham, felt a sort of kinship with the sham pleasures of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street as they travelled painfully towards Soho.
The Doctor is Sick (1960)
…English translation of the Koran. I wonder how, with such a repetitive farrago of platitudes, expressing so self-evident a theology and an ethic so puerile, Islam can have spread as it has.
The Enemy in the Blanket (1958)
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.
Nothing Like the Sun (1964)
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.
The Right to an Answer (1960)
…it was a cardinal rule in the East not to show one’s true feelings.
Time for a Tiger (1956)
I had always had grave doubts about Eliot's taste and, indeed, intelligence. [T.S. Eliot Memorial Lecture, broadcast on BBC Radio 3, 1980]
“…And the rising sun shall rise yet higher, destroying with its flaming fire the evil will of the wicked West, but smiling warmly on the rest”
Beds in the East (1959)
Maugham was a mere visitor and did not have to take any language examinations; a civil servant like myself was forced to reach degree level in Malay....
Homage to QWERT YUIOP: Selected Journalism 1978-1985 (1986)
I take my title from the name the Jews have traditionally given the Roman Empire. You may expect to meet all manner of wickedness in what follows - pork-eating, lechery, adultery, bigamy, sodomy, bestiality, the most ingenious varieties of cruelty, assassination, the worship of false gods and the sin of being uncircumcised.
The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985)
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