In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .

they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget; but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!

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.