Apart from being gratified that my book has been filmed by one of the best living English-speaking producer-directors, instead of by some pornhound or other camera-carrying cretin, I cannot say that my life has been changed in any way by Stanley Kubrick’s success. I seem to have less rather than more money, but I have always seemed to have less. I get odd letters from cranks, accusing me of Sin against the Holy Ghost; invariably, I should think, masturbators, who, having seen the film, have discovered the book, used it as an instrument of auto-erotic release, and then fastened their post-coital guilt on me. Generally I am filled with a vague displeasure that the gap between a literary impact and a cinematic one be so great, not only a temporal gap but an aesthetic one.
Anthony Burgess, from the Norton Critical Edition of A Clockwork Orange (via wwnorton)