The intro to this book made me awfully sad, even more so when I loved the book. The fact that this was perhaps Anthony Burgess' most memorable piece and that he was so ambivalent about it kind of twists my stomach in knots. It's why I felt so guilty giving it a perfect 5 star rating, but I really had no choice. I thought it was brilliant. The entire book had me emotionally attached. I felt angry at the world surrounding Alex and despised almost all he encountered while gnawing at the back of my mind was the unrelenting truth that he himself was a monster. It's an outrageous thought put down on the page, which the intro also touches on, how non-human a being incapable of doing evil is and how it's just as foreign as a being of pure evil. 
 It's a short read, I finished it in a day and a half and in my opinion a must read. Even without the plot Burgess demonstrates how versatile language is and how much a reader can learn from repetition of specific words/phrases and context.