It is impossible to imitate Voltaire without being Voltaire.
It [England] is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty becasue they have no intellect.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet --!
I always want to stay focused on who I am, even as I'm discovering who I am.
When you're building a character, or at least when I'm building a character, you start saying, 'How am I going to make people like him?'
It's nice to have some anonymity and still be low key.
People can be really mean - they say the most vicious things.