But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

There is a minority of gifted, willfuf people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.

They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself

Real journalism is publishing something that somebody else does not want published - the rest is just public relations.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.