His mother Elizabeth died at the age of 30 at home on 19 November 1918, during the 1918-1919 Spanish flu pandemic. He began using the pen name Anthony Burgess on publication of his 1956 novel Time for a Tiger. At his confirmation, the name Anthony was added and he became John Anthony Burgess Wilson. He was known in childhood as Jack Wilson, Little Jack, and Johnny Eagle. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets."īurgess was born John Burgess Wilson on 25 February 1917 in Harpurhey, a suburb of Manchester, to Catholic parents.
1985 ANTHONY BURGESS NOVEL QUOTES HOW TO
They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy." "We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation." "Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. There is a certain renunciation in art." "Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create.
To remember where you come from is part of where you're going." "Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone." "Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through." "One of the delights known to age, and beyond the grasp of youth, is that of Not Going." "Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare." "The downtrodden are the great creators of slang." "The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it." "The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon." "To write is to become disinterested. Books in an average neighborhood branch library: 20,000." "Every dogma has its day." "He said it was artificial respiration, but now I find I am to have his child." "I didn't think I experimented." "If you believe in an unseen Christ, you will believe in the unseen Christlike potential of others." "It's always good to remember where you come from and celebrate it. Average number of books in a chain bookstore: 30,000. Books in an average large city library: 10,000. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room." "Bath twice a day to be really clean, once a day to be passably clean, once a week to avoid being a public menace." "Books in a large university library system: 2,000,000.
he may be permitted to be an intellectual." "Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. "A novelist should not be too intelligent either, although. He composed over 250 musical works, including a first symphony around age 18, wrote a number of libretti, and translated, among other works, Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus the King and Carmen. Burgess was an accomplished musician and linguist. In 2008, The Times placed Burgess number 17 on their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945". He was a prominent critic, writing acclaimed studies of classic writers such as William Shakespeare, James Joyce, D. Burgess produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. It was adapted into a highly controversial 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick which Burgess says is chiefly responsible for the popularity of the book. was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic.The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess' most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works. who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess.