[You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.

I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY

You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.

It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.

The Seven Commandments: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal.