Anthony Burgess - Literature Quotes

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A perverse nature can be stimulated by anything. Any book can be used as a pornographic instrument, even a great work of literature if the mind that so uses it is off-balance. I once found a small boy masturbating in the presence of the Victorian steel-engraving in a family Bible.

Anthony Burgess

Literature, by the way, may be defined as the aesthetic exploitation of language.

Anthony Burgess

As we are all solipsists, and all die, the world dies with us. Only very minor literature aims at apocalypse.

Anthony Burgess

Journalism may not dare too much. It can be gently humorous and ironic, very lightly touched by idiosyncrasy, but it must not repel readers by digging too deeply. This is especially true of its approach to language: the conventions are not questioned. The questioning of linguistic conventions is one of the main duties of what we call literature.

Anthony Burgess

With both agents and publishers hungry for bestsellers, literature will have to end up as a cottage industry.

Anthony Burgess