« Alex is a fascinating character ; one that has marked his age and who will be long remembered. There is a little Alex, a Great Alexander, an Alex the large, a Janus-faced Alex, indeed a manyfaced Alex sleeping within many of his "brothers", as Burgess's humble narrator calls his readers. We are Alex's brothers in violence, in blindness and certainly in hypocrisy. "Every day we go a step further down towards hell, without horror, stealing in passing some illicit pleasure which we squeeze very hard like an old dry orange". »