Top 15 Malcolm Bradbury Quotes

A conventional good read is usually a bad read, a relaxing bath in what we know already. A true good read is surely an act of innovative creation in which we, the readers, become conspirators.

Genitals are a great distraction to scholarship.

The better class of Briton likes to send his children away to school until they're old and intelligent enough to come home again. Then they're too old and intelligent to want to.

In Slaka, sex is just politics with the clothes off.

To you liberals, of course, goats are just sheep from broken homes.

'It must be nice to think there is a true reality,' says Miss Callendar. 'I've always found reality a matter of great debate.'

'I think, George,' says Merion, ' the trouble is that you don't have a conflict model of society.'

'The trouble is, it's hard to know you're little,' says Felicity. 'People like to make themselves matter.'

All action leads to suffering, someone else's, or one's own.

'Look, Felicity,' says Howard, 'there's only one rule. Follow the line of your own desires.'

'Oh, everybody exploits somebody,' says Howard, 'in this social order it's part of the human lot.'

Jochum had said, "You keep asking the universe 'How ought I to live?' But it can't answer."

You see, you are an optimist and live on hope. I am a pessimist and live on experience.

The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.

"We got a course in picknicking at the university," said Dr. Bourbon. "It's called Geology, but it's really picknicking."