On the set of A Clockwork Orange.

“It was absolutely necessary to give weight to Alex’s brutality, otherwise I think there would be moral confusion with respect to what the government does to him. If he were a lesser villain, then one could say: ‘Oh, yes, of course, he should not be given this psychological conditioning; it’s all too horrible and he really wasn’t that bad after all.’ On the other hand, when you have shown him committing such atrocious acts, and you still realize the immense evil on the part of the government in turning him into something less than human to make him good, then I think the essential moral idea of the book is clear. It is necessary for man to have choice to be good or evil, even if he chooses evil. To deprive him of this choice is to make him something less than human—a clockwork orange.”