Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“He was alone with seven thousand books...mostly aged and unsaleable.” — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“When a novel lacks the indefinable, unmistakable thing we call beauty, one looks in it for sound delineation of character, or humour… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“It was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960. The” — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“Animal Farm is not a book about how pigs—animals—when bestowed with power start to behave like men. It is a book about… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside its… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“These books can be read, independently of their time and place, as a strong preventive medicine against the mentality of servility, and… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“The history books say that life before the Revolution was completely different from what it is now. There was the most terrible… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“He got up. It was too early to go to bed; at least, he was not in the mood for it. He… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“The Animal Farm is a well written book in comprehensive english. George Orwell compares the communist Russian political system trying to make… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere in remote distance a rocket bomb thundered. The blissful feeling of being alone with the… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“There was a whole chain of separate departments dealing with proletarian literature, music, drama and entertainment generally. Here were produced rubbishy newspapers… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money. — George Orwell Copy Share Image
In places this book is a little over-written, because Mr Blunden is no more able to resist a quotation than some people… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“If one faces facts one must admit that nearly everything describable as Socialist literature is dull, tasteless, and bad” — George Orwell Copy Share Image
If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would… — George Orwell Copy Share Image
“The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron—they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions,” — George Orwell Copy Share Image
In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel.:; Up to 1914 you did… — George Orwell Copy Share
It was given out that the animals there practised cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes, and had their females in common. This was… — George Orwell Copy Share
“The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running… — George Orwell Copy Share
He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the… — George Orwell Copy Share
“if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and in every verse wrote 'money' instead of 'charity', the chapter had ten times as much meaning… — George Orwell Copy Share
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became… — George Orwell Copy Share
“Whitman himself "accepted" a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through… — George Orwell Copy Share
“But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Whatever the Party holds to… — George Orwell Copy Share
“And the people under the sky were also very much the same...everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just… — George Orwell Copy Share
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally… — George Orwell Copy Share
Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly. — George Orwell Copy Share
“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to… — George Orwell Copy Share
And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at… — George Orwell Copy Share
“Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution.… — George Orwell Copy Share
