Reviewers do not read books with much care . . . their profession is more given to stupidity and malice and literary ignorance even than the profession of novelist.

To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.

Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.

... A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?' Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high type preaching goloss: '- The attempt to impose upon a man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpen-

The trouble began with Forster. After him it was considered ungentlemanly to write more than five or six novels.

I didn't think; I experimented.

Life is, of course, terrible.