The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.

I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside... there's a thin man inside every fat man.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.