Writer Quotes by George Orwell

Good writing is like a windowpane.

— George Orwell

Writing a novel is agony.

— George Orwell

The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.

— George Orwell

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

— George Orwell

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

— George Orwell

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

— George Orwell

The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

— George Orwell

[You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It…

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

— George Orwell

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

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

— George Orwell

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

“The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had…

— George Orwell

The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's…

— George Orwell

“But if one wants to be primarily a writer, then, in our society, one is an animal that is tolerated but not…

— George Orwell

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a…

— George Orwell

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying…

— George Orwell

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

“But there is also the minority of gifted, wilful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and…

— George Orwell

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter…

— George Orwell

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be…

— George Orwell

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying…

— George Orwell

“Julia had once been picked out to work in Pornosec, the sub-section of the Fiction Department which turned out cheap pornography for…

— George Orwell

“I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be…

— George Orwell

“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book…

— George Orwell

“For the first time in my life I took to writing things on walls. The passage-ways of several smart restaurants had '…

— George Orwell

For a creative writer possession of the ruth is less important than emotional sincerity.

— George Orwell

“One way of feeling infallible is not to keep a diary”

— George Orwell

Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.

— George Orwell

Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

— George Orwell

“He was alone with seven thousand books...mostly aged and unsaleable.”

— George Orwell

“I do hope you'll forgive me if I overwhelm you with talk. When I meet somebody who's heard that books exist, I'm…

— George Orwell

“This idea that the buying, or even the reading, of books is an expensive hobby and beyond the reach of the average…

— George Orwell

If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would…

— George Orwell

Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

— George Orwell