I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...

It is bound to be a failure, every book is a failure, but I do know with some clarity what kind of book I want to write.

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.

Beware of my partisanship, my mistakes of fact and the distortion inevitably caused by my having seen only one corner of events.