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 … - Anthony Burgess

You must take your chance boy. The choice has been all yours.

There's no doubt that there is a homosexual mafia. Indeed, we had a homosexual Prime Minister, Edward Heath. He's been very clever about it. He's been known to accost little boys. It may have been hushed up. [Remark quoted in Roger Lewis, Anthony Burgess (2002), p. 184]

Me, me, me. How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?

He stayed in no one place very long, but he usually managed to absorb something of the atmosphere of each town, village or rubber estate he visited, and he always made quick contact with the local residents. These residents were invariably Europeans - planters, colonial officials, businessmen, or just men living in exile to escape from trouble or sadness at home - and there is little evidence that Maugham gained, or wished to gain, any direct knowledge of the lives and customs of the native peoples of the East. This must be disappointing to present-day Malay and Indian and Chinese and Eurasian readers of his stories, but we have to remember that (apart from the fact that Maugham had no time to learn Malay or Chinese or Tamil) the Western attitude to the Far East was very different in Maugham's time from what it is today. [Introduction to Maugham's Malaysian Stories (1969)]