England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.
George OrwellFootball, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.
George OrwellThe writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.
George Orwell