If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.

There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.

A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.