Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

The birds sang, the proles sang. the Party did not sing. All round the world, in London and New York, in Africa and Brazil, and in the mysterious, forbidden lands beyond the frontiers, in the streets of Paris and Berlin, in the villages of the endless Russian plain, in the bazaars of China and Japan — everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing.

Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.

It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

...men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.