Anthony Burgess Quotes

“I didn't think; I experimented.”

“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.”

“Literature is the aesthetic exploitation of language.”

“A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.”

“A word in a dictionary is very much like a car in a mammoth motor show ? full of potential but temporarily inactive.”

“Any book has behind it all the other books that have been written.”

“Art is dangerous. It is one of the attractions, when it ceases to be dangerous you don't want it.”

“Death comes along like a gas bill one can't pay.”

“Every dogma has its day.”

“I conclude that there is as much sense in nonsense as there is nonsense in sense.”

“I start at the beginning, go on to the end, then stop.”

“I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.”

“I've always felt that English women had to be approached in a sisterly manner, rather than an erotic manner.”

“Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare.”

“Women thrive on novelty and are easy meat for the commerce of fashion. Men prefer old pipes and torn jackets.”