Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist? O'Brien: Of course he exists. Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me? O'Brien: You do not exist.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

Cricket is a game full or forlorn hopes and sudden dramatic changes of fortune and its rules are so ill-defined that their interpretation is partly an ethical business.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.

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