The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

You are a slow learner, Winston." "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you?

By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.

Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state - however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor.

To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.

Reality is inside the skull.