Clockwork Orange Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Clockwork Orange. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orangeβ€”meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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But what I do I do because I like to do.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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What's it going to be then, eh?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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This must be a real horrorshow film if you're so keen on my viddying it.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?' And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: 'Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Great Music, it said, and Great Poetry would like quieten Modern Youth down and make Modern Youth more Civilized. Civilized my syphilised yarbles.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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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.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Civilised my syphilised yarbles.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I was always on my oddy knocky.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I said, smiling very wide and droogie: β€˜Well, if it isn’t fat stinking billygoat Billyboy in poison. How art thou, thou globby bottle of cheap stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly, thou.’ And then we started.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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What I do I do because I like to do.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning vonny earth and the stars and the old Luna up there. ... And all that cal.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I was cured all right.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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You were not put on this Earth just to get in touch with god
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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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?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It may not be nice to be good, little 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? Deep and hard questions, little 6655321.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I viddied that thinking is for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use like inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I am everyone's friend,'I said.'Except to my enemies.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. ----- "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" intro to first full American version 1986
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Oh bliss, bliss and heaven... Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh... And then, a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now... I knew such lovely pictures - Alex
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And I thought to myself, Hell and blast you all, if all you bastards are on the side of Good then I'm glad I belong to the other shop.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Bedways is rightways now, so best we go homeways.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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We were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name – A CLOCKWORK ORANGE – and I said: β€˜That’s a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?’ Then I read a malenky bit out loud in a sort of very high preaching goloss: β€˜β€”The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my swordpenβ€”
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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You needn't take it any further, sir. You've proved to me that all this ultraviolence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned me lesson, sir. I've seen now what I've never seen before. I'm cured! Praise Bog! I'm cured! I was cured alright.
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Anthony Burgess (Clockwork Orange)
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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.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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That's the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Alex like groweth up, Oh Yes.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Is the man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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But this one was a writer, not a reader.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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If I had died it would have been even better for you political bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are.' But all that came out was er er er.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And those hard slovos, brothers, were like the beginning of my freedom.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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The heresy of an age of reason,' or some such slovos [words]. 'I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Never,' I said. 'One can die but once. Dim died before he was born. That red red krovvy will soon stop.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days, and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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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.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Each man kills the thing he loves
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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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.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.
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Anthony Burgess
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Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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By definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. This is what the television news is all about. Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Oh, it was gorgeosity and yumyumyum. When it came to the Scherzo I could viddy myself very clear running and running on like the very light and mysterious nogas, carving the whole litso of the creeching world with my cut-throat britva.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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They don't go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of the brave malenky selves fighting these big machines?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the CAUSE of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into what is the cause of GOODNESS, so why of the other shop?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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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 it used to interest me sometimes to slooshy what some of these starry decreps had to say about life and the world. I said: 'Oh. And what's stinking about it?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And, my brothers, it was real satisfaction to me to waltz-left two three, right two three-and carve left cheeky and right cheeky, so that like two curtains of blood seemed to pour out at the same time, one on either side of his fat filthy oily snout in the winter starlight.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off forever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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It seems priggish or pollyannaish to deny that my intention in writing the work was to titillate the nastier propensities of my readers. My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist’s innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip-music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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And I sort of frowned about that, thinking. 'You felt ill this afternoon,' he said, 'because you're getting better. When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea. You're becoming healthy, that's all.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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That's what it's going to be then, brothers, as I come to the like end of this tale. You have been everywhere with your little droog Alex, suffering with him, and you have viddied some of the most grahzny bratchnies old Bog ever made, all on to your old droog Alex. And all it was was that I was young. But now as I end this story, brothers, I am not young, not no longer, oh no. Alex like groweth up, oh yes. But where I itty now, O my brothers, is all on my oddy knocky, where you cannot go. Tomorrow is all like sweet flowers and the turning young earth and the stars and the old Luna up there and your old droog Alex all on his oddy knocky seeking like a mate. And all that cal. A terrible grahzny vonny world, really, O my brothers. And so farewell from your little droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lipmusic brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that call.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation, or an increase in wisdom, operating in your chief character or characters. Even trashy bestsellers show people changing. When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. - from the introduction of the 1986 Norton edition
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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One thing I could never stand was to see a filthy dirty old drunky howling away at the filthy songs of his fathers and going blurp blurp in between as it might be a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts;I could never stand to see anyone like that. whatever his age might be, but more especially when he was real old like this one was.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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An eye for an eye, I say. If someone hits you you hit back, do you not? Why then should not the State, very severely hit by you brutal hooligans, not hit back also? But the new view is to say no. The new view is that we turn the bad into the good. All of which seems to me grossly unjust.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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I had thought we were friends," he said. "I cannot be your friend." He took a step forward. "What if I were to ask youβ€”" "Gideon!" It was Henry, at the open door, breathless, wearing one of his terrible green-and-orange-striped waistcoats. "Your brother's here. Downstairsβ€”" Gideon's eyes widened. "Gabriel's here?" "Yes. Shouting something about your father, but he won't tell us anything more unless you're there. He swears it. Come along." Gideon hesitated, his eyes moving from Henry to Sophie, who tried to look invisible. "I . . ." "Come now, Gideon." Henry rarely spoke sharply, and when he did, the effect was startling. "He's covered in blood.
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3))
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It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Some of us have to fight. There are great traditions of liberty to defend. I am no partisan man. Where I see the infamy I seek to erase it. Party names mean nothing. The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded-.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Then I noticed, in all my pain and sickness,what music it was that like crackled and boomed on the sound-track, and it was Ludwig van, the last movement of the Fifth Symphony, and I creeched like bezoomny at that. "Stop!" I creeched. "Stop, you grahzny disgusting sods. It's a sin, that's what it is, a filthy unforgivable sin, you bratchnies!
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Now in those days, my brothers, the teaming up was mostly by fours and fives, these being like auto-teams, for being a comfy number for an auto, and six being the outside limit for gang-size. Sometimes gangs would gang up so as to make like malenky armies for big nightwar, but mostly it was best to roam in these like small numbers.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time - Now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly, I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones, and that the oomny ones use like, inspiration and what Bog sends. Now it was lovely music that came into my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on, and I viddied right at once what to do.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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My book was Kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. What was really wanted was a Nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it. Let us have evil prancing on the page... up to the very last line... Such a book would be sensational, and so it is. But I do not think it is it fair picture of human life. I do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange-meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil... It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice... Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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But poor old Dim kept looking up at the stars and planets and the Luna with his rot wide open like a kid who'd never viddied any such thing before, and he said: "What's on them, I wonder. What would be up there on things like that?" I nudged him hard, saying: "Come, gloopy bastard as thou art. Think thou not on them. There'll be life like down here most likely, with some getting knifed and others doing the knifing.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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You've sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being. You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine capable only of good. And I see that clearly - that business about marginal conditionings. Music and the sexual act, literature and art, all must be a source now not of pleasure but of pain.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)
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Well well well. What makes, bratty. What gives, this fine bright middle of the nochy?" He said: "I'll give you just ten seconds to wipe that stupid grin off of your face. Then I want you to listen." "Well, what?" I said, smecking. "Are you not satisfied with beating me near to death and having me spat upon and making me confess to crimes for hours on end and then shoving me among bezoomnies and vonny perverts in that grahzny cell? Have you some new torture for me, you bratchny?" "It'll be your own torture," he said, serious. "I hope to God it'll torture you to madness." And then, before he told me, I knew what it was. The old ptitsa who had all the kots and koshkas had passed on to a better world in one of the city hospitals. I'd cracked her a bit too hard, like. Well, well, that was everything. I thought of all those kots and koshkas mewling for moloko and getting none, not any more from their starry forella of a mistress. That was everything. I'd done the lot, now and me still only fifteen.
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Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)