Anthony Burgess

She gave the lie to the European superstition - chiefly a missionary superstition - that the women of the East are downtrodden.

…when I went out I tried to push the door instead of pulling it. 'Pull it, mate,' said someone, and I had to obey. I nearly tripped over a footscraper and, the door closed, had the impression of loud laughter. The vile blunt-razor-blade wind blew hard from my sister’s house. I felt ashamed and furious. In the East there was politeness, doors opened the right way, there were no footscrapers.

Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

She sank again into the salty water...into the delicious warm brine-tasting depths of her grief.

The church stands that it may be battered, but the fists that batter know their own impotence.

Pete held his rookers and Georgie sort of hooked his rot wide open for him and Dim yanked out his false zoobies, upper and lower. He threw these down on the pavement and then I treated them to the old boot-crush, though they were hard bastards like. . . . The old veck began to make sort of chumbling shooms — “wuf waf wof” — so Georgie let go of holding his goobers apart and just let him have one in the toothless rot with his ringy fist, and that made the old veck start moaning a lot then, then out comes the blood, my brothers, real beautiful.

…the Malay word chium meant to plough the beloved’s face with one’s nose

and you were sort of hypnotized by your boot or shoe or a finger-nail as it might be,and at the same time you were sort of picked up by the old scruff and shook like you might be a cat.you got shook and shook till there was nothing left.you lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care,and you waited until your boot or finger-nail got yellow,then yellower and yellower all the time.then the lights started cracking like atomics and the boot or finger-nail or,as it might be,a bit of dirt on your trouser-bottom turned into a big big big mesto,bigger than the whole world,and you were just going to get introduced to old Bog or God when it was all over.you came back to here and now whimpering sort of,with your rot all squaring up for a boohoohoo.now that’s very nice but very cowardly.you were not put on this earth just to get in touch with God.that sort of thing could sap all the strength and the goodness out of a chelloveck.

Then I wanted to sick up the gluey pie I'd had before the start of the evening, But I couldn't stand the sort of veshch, sicking all over the floor, so I held it back.

I was cured all right.

The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.

One can die but once. Dim died before he was born.

In other words, I heard life going on, and it was a comfort.

'And make up your mind about what bloody race you belong to. One minute it’s all about being a farmer’s boy in Northamptonshire and the next you’re on about the old days in Calcutta and what the British have done to Mother India and the snake-charmers and the bloody temple-bells. Ah, wake up, for God’s sake. You’re English right enough but you’re forgetting how to speak the bloody language, what with traipsing about with Punjabis and Sikhs and God knows what. You talk Hindustani in your sleep, man. Sort it out, for God’s sake. If you want to put a loincloth on, get cracking, but don’t expect the privileges --’ (the word came out in a wet blurr; the needle stuck for a couple of grooves) ‘the privileges, the privileges…’

Then there was like quiet and we were full of like hate, so smashed what was left to be smashed.