“To be left alone is the most precious thing one can ask of the modern world.”
More from Anthony Burgess on Life
“Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.”
“Life's only choosing when to die. Life's a big postponement because the choice is so difficult. It's a tremendous relief not to have to choose.”
“In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations.”
“Wedged as we are between two eternities of idleness, there is no excuse for being idle now.”
Others on Life
Jonathan Safran Foer
22 quotes“One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second”
Mitch Albom
18 quotes“Behind all your stories is always your mother's story. Because hers is where yours begin.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
16 quotes“I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world.”
Henry Miller
15 quotes“We create our fate every day ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”
Lord Byron
14 quotes“The great art of life is sensation to feel that we exist even in pain.”
Cormac McCarthy
14 quotes“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. I didn't believe in that. Tomorrow wasn't getting ready for them. It didn...”
Virginia Woolf
14 quotes“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Joseph Campbell
14 quotes“I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive...”
Margaret Atwood
13 quotes“Surviving Is the only warWe can afford”
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
13 quotes“Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.”
Søren Kierkegaard
13 quotes“Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards.”
Sarah Dessen
13 quotes“All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control....”