Go on, do me in, you bastard cowards, I don't want to live anyway, not in a stinking world like this one.' I told Dim to lay off a bit then, because … - Anthony Burgess

The essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.

A heavy task, but there was light relief In the Germanic ambience, boisterous, brash, Torchlit parades and pogroms, guttural grief In emigration queues, the smash and crash Of pawnshop windows by insentient beef In uniform, the gush of beer, the splash Of schnapps, the joy of being drunk and Aryan, Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian. Human pain meant But little in the Gulf War's visual grammar, a Big feast of death to feed the cinecamera

Vorpal had the trick of adding a Malay enclitic to his utterances. This also had power to irritate, especially in the mornings. It irritated Nabby Adams that this should irritate him, but somewhere at the back of his brain was the contempt of the man learned in languages for the silly show-off, jingling the small change of ‘wallah’ and charpoy...