Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

The Communism of the English intellectual is something explicable enough. It is the patriotism of the deracinated.

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

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.