A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange a book by Anthony Burgess, was made into a film in 1971.

Alex

• "What's it going to be then, eh?"
  • Source: Part 3, Chapter 01, sentence 01

• "Come with uncle," I said, "and hear all proper. Hear angel trumpets and devil trombones. You are invited."

• 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.

• Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?

• Lets make things nice and sparkling clear. This sarcasm - if I may call it such, is very unbecoming of you oh my brothers

• You try to frighten me. Admit so, sir. This is some new form of torture. Say it, Brother Sir.

• "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence."

• "Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!" (This was said while listening to Ludwig Van's Ninth Symphony)

• "Initiative comes to thems that wait."

• "What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs and lashings of the old ultraviolence."

• 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!
• "It’s funny how the colours of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen."

• "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."

• "Well, well, well, well. If it isn't fat, stinking billygoat Billy-Boy in poison. How art thou, thy globby bottle of cheap, stinking chip-oil? Come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles, you eunuch jelly thou."

• "Then I looked at its top sheet, and there was the name -A CLOCKWORK ORANGE- and I said: 'That's a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of a clockwork orange?'

Minister of the Interior

• "There was a man. . .a writer of subversive literature."

• “Padre, these are subtleties. We’re not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics. We are concerned only with cutting down crime--and. . .with relieving the ghastly congestion in our prisons. He will be your true Christian: ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather than crucify, sick to the very heart at the thought even of killing a fly! Reclamation! Joy before the angels of God! The point is that it works.”

• "Excellent. He's enterprising, aggressive, outgoing, young, bold, vicious. He'll do...He's perfect. I want his records sent to me. This vicious young hoodlum will be transformed out of all recognition."

• "We are all going to die. its only a matter of time."

Mr. Alexander

• “The common people will let it go. Oh yes, they’ll sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be led, sir, driven, pushed!”

• "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 sword-pen."
  • • • Source: Part 1, Chapter 02, sentence 23

P.R. Deltoid

• I've just come from the hospital; your victim has died.

• It'll be your own torture. I hope to God it'll torture you to madness.

• “We study the problem. We’ve been studying it for damn well near a century, yes, but we get no further with our studies. You’ve got a good home here, good loving parents. You’ve got not too bad of a brain! Is it some devil that crawls inside of you?”

Prison Chaplain

• "What's it going to be then, eh?"
  • Source: Part 2, Chapter 01, sentence 01

• "A lot of idiots you are, selling your own birthright for a saucer of cold porridge! The thrill of theft! Of violence! The urge to live easy! Well, I ask you what is it worth when we have undeniable truth, yes, incontrovertible evidence that Hell exists."

• "Don't you laugh, damn you, don't you laugh!"

• "When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."

• "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?"
  • Source: Part 2, Chapter xx, sentence xx

• “Choice. The boy has no real choice, has he? Self-interest, the fear of physical pain drove him to that grotesque act of self-abasement. Its insincerity was clearly to be seen. He ceases to be a wrongdoer. He ceases also to be a creature capable of moral choice.”