# Quote — Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

> [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.

- Author: [Anthony Burgess](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess.md)
- Book: [A Clockwork Orange](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess/a-clockwork-orange.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anthony_Burgess#A_Clockwork_Orange_(1962)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess/a-clockwork-orange/youth-is-only

## More from this book

> "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."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess/a-clockwork-orange/the-attempt-to-impose.md)

> "Initiative comes to them as wait."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess/a-clockwork-orange/initiative-comes-to-them.md)

> 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 trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/anthony-burgess/a-clockwork-orange/there-was-me-that-is.md)