Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.
Anthony BurgessLiterature ceases to be literature when it commits itself to moral uplift; it becomes moral philosophy or some such dull thing.
Anthony BurgessI don't write out of fear. I write out of a strong urge to meet death on its own eternal terms, because the fact is that if you write as little as a page of prose-even bad prose-that is eternal.
Anthony BurgessIf you write fiction you are, in a sense, corrupted. There's a tremendous corruptibility for the fiction writer because you're dealing mainly with sex and violence. These remain the basic themes, they're the basic themes of Shakespeare whether you like it or not.
Anthony Burgess