And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.

Reality is inside the skull.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.