Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

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

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

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

The typical socialist... a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler and often with vegetarian leanings.